Christopher Michel discusses The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov – a book that challenges the long-held consensus that Nabokov was merely an aesthete.
Necessary Nabokov
New Harvey
At Variety‘s blog, news that Steven Speilberg has signed on to his next project: A remake of Harvey, the Pulitzer-winning 1944 play and beloved 1950 Jimmy Stewart movie about a man, Elwood P. Dowd, and his friendship with an invisible giant rabbit.
“Go Read Alice”
The diary novel may be “an under-attended” genre, but Johannah King-Slutzky is trying to remedy that. In an essay for The Hairpin she traces the diary novel’s history from the Victorian era to Go Ask Alice while examining the genre’s balance of “melodrama and awkward moralizing” with the potential for subversion.
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The Immortal Book
Not-so-breaking news: Books are the best way to store information. CDs, flash memory, hard drives, and other digital storage devices aren’t nearly as durable as good old fashioned paper. So the next time someone says you have too many books, just say it’s your attempt at immortality.
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Permeated by Violence
Ratik Asokan reviews Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador by Horacio Castellanos Moya, a story about dealing with the violence that permeates El Salvador’s culture. “Fiction, unlike journalism, has allowed Moya to express the frustration and existential terror of living in a society thoroughly permeated by violence.” Pair with our reviews of Moya’s Tyrant Memory and The Dream of My Return.
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Much Ado About Turkish Publishing
Millions contributor Kaya Genç reports on Istos, a Greek-owned publishing house based in Istanbul, Turkey, that’s “interested in challenging the partial, nostalgic stereotype of the old Greek community as a fashionable elite.” Meanwhile, across town, the Çağlayan Courts of Justice shocked the Turkish literati with a warning for the Sel Publishing House: stop publishing the “obscene” works of writers like William Burroughs and Chuck Palahniuk.
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