To celebrate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death in 2016, he’s getting a makeover. Jeanette Winterson is writing a cover of The Winter’s Tale, and Anne Tyler will be revamping The Taming of the Shrew for a 21st century audience. While you wait, watch Joss Whedon’s update of Much Ado About Nothing.
The Bard 2.0
In and Out
Is it possible you have a binge reading disorder? It might seem ridiculous, but there’s mounting evidence that the Internet, which allows us to read far more than we ever have, is creating a world in which we constantly read but retain very little. Nikkitha Bakshani takes a look at the evidence for The Morning News.
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Something Simple
“When I want to be ambushed, captured, thrust into a strange and vivid world, and tossed aloft until I cannot stand it, until everything is at stake and life feels almost unbearably vivid, I do something simple. I read short stories.” Electric Literature has posted Ben Marcus‘s “paean to the contemporary American short story,” which doubles as the introduction to New American Stories and does a pretty good job of capturing just what it is we love about reading fiction.
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Declan Meade and Ireland’s Stinging Fly
Eileen Battersby profiled Declan Meade, the publisher, editor, and co-founder of Ireland’s Stinging Fly literary journal. The magazine, which just published its 43rd issue, has been credited with popularizing some of Ireland’s most significant contemporary writers.
Postscript
Just before he died earlier this year, Nobel winner Günter Grass completed his last manuscript, Vonne Endlichkait, “a literary experiment” that combines prose, poetry, and illustration. The book has just been published in German and will be available in English next year.
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Editors on Deck
Adweek engages in a little inside-baseball speculation, wondering who would be in line to take over at, say, the New Yorker if David Remnick were to step down and who might be next in line for Graydon Carter’s gig at Vanity Fair?
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Welles and Wells
Orson Welles and H.G. Wells talk to one another, and now you can listen thanks to the magic of YouTube. (via)
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Charles Wright is Our New Poet Laureate
You can get acquainted with Charles Wright, the nation’s newest Poet Laureate, by checking out interviews he did with StorySouth and The Paris Review, and also by reading his work – much of which can be found online. Might I suggest this poem, which was published by the VQR?
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