Charles Dickens becomes an honorary member of The Smiths in BBC’s Horrible Histories music video. My favorite lyric: “Whilst writing Edwin Drood, a train crash didn’t help my mood.”
Please, Please, Please, Let Charles Dickens Get What He Wants
Digital Eustace
Sparksheet interviews Blake Eskin, the New Yorker’s first and only web editor, who shares the venerable magazine’s unique approach to having an online presence. (via)
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Next Up, Denmark
After waking us up to their favorite Brazilian novelists, the editorial board at Granta is turning its gaze to Norway. In the first issue of Norwegian Granta, you’ll find a slew of stories by illustrious contributors (among them Jennifer Egan, Roberto Bolano and Alice Munro) alongside new stories from authors native to the country. At Granta’s website, you can read an interview with the magazine’s online editor, Ted Hodgkinson.
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The Cosmonaut
Conrad Aiken’s tombstone reads: “Cosmos Mariner — Destination Unknown.” Which raises the question: what exactly does this epitaph say about the poet’s work? In the LA Times, an argument that Aiken deserves a reappraisal.
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And on and on and on.
Carl Wilson, author of Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the end of Taste (a book length study of Celine Dion‘s megablockbusting album of the same name), revisits the enduring and sort of nauseating classic from Titanic‘s soundtrack in The Atlantic.
The 2016 BTBA Longlist
The longlist for this year’s Best Translated Book Award came out. Fiction finalists include Year in Reading alumna Katrina Dodson’s translation of Clarice Lispector’s Complete Stories (reviewed here by Magdalena Edwards), Ann Goldstein’s translation of Elena Ferrante’s The Story of the Lost Child, Lisa Dillman’s translation of Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World (discussed here in our Book Report), and Christina MacSweeney’s translation of Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth (reviewed here by Lily Meyer). Poetry finalists include Jason Weiss’s translation of Silvina Ocampo and Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s translation of Yi Lu.
William Kelley, a Lost Literary Giant
“I didn’t know who William Kelley was when I found that book but, like millions of Americans, I knew a term he is credited with first committing to print. ‘If You’re Woke, You Dig It’ read the headline of a 1962 Op-Ed that Kelley published in the New York Times, in which he pointed out that much of what passed for “beatnik” slang (“dig,” “chick,” “cool”) originated with African-Americans.” Are you familiar with William Kelley? Let Kathryn Schulz be your guide on this historical literary adventure as she discovers an immensely influential writer whom most of us have never heard mentioned.