Year In Reading contributor and The End of Oulipo author Scott Esposito has been reading a lot of William Gaddis’s letters recently. Over at his blog, he’s shared his favorite ten passages from Gaddis’s collected correspondence.
The Best of Gaddis’s Letters
Home Is Where the Story Begins
“Is the reason to have a home, as the narrator in Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, asserts, ‘to keep certain people in and everyone else out’? Or does home, as the narrator in William Maxwell’s autobiographical novel So Long, See You Tomorrow suggests, work primarily as a scaffolding of known things — as a place to read, a place to stash the damp umbrella, a place to listen to the porch swing creak?” Beth Kephart on the literary significance of home.
Whitman Passes Away
George Whitman, owner of the storied Parisian English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company, died this week at the age of 98.
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Oscar Wilde’s Love Letters Discovered
“No dress, just ourselves and a flask of Italian wine”; “Till Thursday night. This is all wrong, isn’t it.” A collection of love letters written by Oscar Wilde to a young male magazine editor have been discovered.
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Roald Dahl’s Salty Advice
Trashy reads
This blog post from the NYT Magazine’s culture editor Adam Sternbergh rounds up some some well known lit lovers’ suggestions for some of those of you looking for some “red hot summer trash” to add to your reading list. Maud Newton and our own Garth Risk Hallberg both recommended Lonesome Dove, so that’s going on my reading list for sure.
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