And then there was you: the Oxford English Dictionary is soliciting public help in tracking down “a mysterious, possibly pornographic, 19th-century book from which a number of its quotations are derived.”
Whodunnit
Perfectly Imperfect Proust
In a piece for the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik writes about a new life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff, the first translator of Proust into English, and about the strange success and beauty his imperfect translation of Remembrance of Things Past achieved. The essay as a whole pairs well with both our own Bill Morris‘s essay against literary biography and Barclay Bram Shoemaker‘s Millions review of Mo Yan‘s Frog and “the trouble with translation.”
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An Irish Books Mule
Anne Enright remarks on Irish censorship, and she recalls the time her own mother was used “as a books mule.”
Border Borrowing
The Haskell Free Library straddles the U.S.-Canadian border. Enter the library in the United States, and browse through the books in Canada.
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HBO Is Having Leftovers
According to sources for Vulture, HBO has ordered a television pilot based on Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers, which “takes place in a world still reeling from a Rapture-like event three years earlier.” The project will be managed by Lost co-producer Damon Lindelof.
A secret room in a library in India
The Times of India reports on an eerie library mystery: renovations to the 250-year-old National Library in Kolkata have revealed a secret chamber. The sealed 1000 square foot enclosure on the first floor has no windows, trapdoors, or openings of any kind.
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He Means Well
The “good bad guy” has been having his moment on television. From Don Draper to Tony Soprano, America loves the anti-hero. Here’s a look at some literary anti-heroes from over at Ploughshares. You are likely to either agree with or be enraged by this essay from The Millions on likeability in fiction.
Football Book Club: ‘Milk and Filth’
This week the Band of Merry Men/Women that is of Football Book Club is reading Carmen Giménez Smith’s poetry collection Milk and Filth — and posting about Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction. Also: Check in later this week for possible guest posts by Ben Carson and Donald Trump. Also: There will be no guest posts by Ben Carson and Donald Trump.
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