On His Mistress Going to Bed
e-reading Thomas Pynchon
After years of resistance, Thomas Pynchon is only now allowing for his work to be sold as ebooks.
Laughing at Lawyers
“Yes, it’s easy to laugh at the lawyers. But what if the lawyers were right? For the question that still needs to be answered, I think, is whether the arguments over the novel’s obscenity and obscurity were just temporary historical effects or whether they point to the essence of Joyce’s originality.” A longform look at why we should still find Ulysses scandalous.
●
●
The Birth of the Ellipsis
A Cambridge professor has identified the earliest use of the ellipsis in English literature. Find out more at The Guardian. Sam Anderson reminds us that ellipses are good in moderation through an examination of Dan Brown’s Inferno.
●
●
Anonymous Authors
Recommended Reading: Art Winslow asks, “did Thomas Pynchon publish a novel under the pseudonym Adrian Jones Pearson?”
●
●
●
●
Whaleship Essex to Become BBC Documentary
The true story of the Whaleship Essex – which was deftly recounted in Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 book In the Heart of the Sea – will soon be adapted into a 90-minute documentary for the BBC. As avid whale watchers already know, the plight of the Essex is what ultimately inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick. You can get an overview of the disaster at Melville House’s blog, Moby Lives. (How appropriate!)
●
●
A Censor’s Tour
Recommended reading: Peter Hessler writes about spending a week on tour with his Chinese censor.
●
●