Brontë-inspired short fiction courtesy of Rachel Cantor? Sure, why not. (For background, you might want to read our own Edan Lepucki’s takedown of the love interest in Jane Eyre.)
Dear Sirs, I Do Enjoy This
Art Is Not a Neutral Act
Grace D. Li discusses her debut novel, Portrait of a Thief, which follows a group of Chinese Americans as they pull off a heist to reclaim priceless Chinese art.
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Make the Canadians Face Off Against Everybody Else, Too
“Nurturing eventually becomes coddling, and now it’s time to encourage that work to take a bigger stage,” writes Jared Bland in his plea for the Griffin Poetry Prize to combine its two categories – Canadian and English-language – into one, global whole.
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Rejection Romanticized
Recommended Reading: Kavita Das on why writers shouldn’t romanticize rejection. “Not only is it harder for writers of color to get published, but when rejecting our work, publishers tell us that what we’re writing about is too narrow and niche and won’t appeal to mainstream audiences.” Our own Bill Morris writes about the sorry state of rejection letters and literary magazine editors take your questions about them.
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The Importance of Being Oscar
A new Oscar Wilde letter has been discovered, in which he advises a Mr. Morgan to “make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repaid but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you.”
“First you take a drink … then the drink takes you.”
At The Daily Beast, Jimmy So writes about F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s penchant for alcohol. This article is best paired with On Booze, a new collection of previously unpublished Fitzgerald snippets.
Zone One Excerpt
As stated on his website, you can now read the first section of Colson Whitehead‘s forthcoming Zone One. (Scribd). The book will release this October, and it was tapped in our “Great Second Half of 2011 Book Preview.”
Colonized
A Canadian Ph.D. student wrote (and successfully defended!) a 52,000 word dissertation that features almost no punctuation. Titled “Indigenous Architecture through Indigenous Knowledge,” the dissertation has no periods, commas or semi-colons, a choice intended to “make a point” about colonial and aboriginal identity. Canada’s National Post has the story.
Melville the Whale
To honor Herman Melville for making the great white whale a metaphor for the inscrutable and unknowable, a prehistoric leviathan now bears his name. (Thanks, Kevin)
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