John Sunyer checks in with Franco Moretti at the Stanford Literary Lab. Moretti, a 63-year-old professor of English, is the author of Distant Reading – a book in which he lays out his long-held belief that “literary study doesn’t require scholars to actually read the books.” Rather, he believes in a “new approach to literature [that] depends on computers to crunch ‘big data,’ or stores of massive amounts of information, to produce new insights.”
“What’d You Major In?” “Big Literary Data.”
The Bard For 100
Jonathan Franzen knows a lot about birds. The novelist competed on Jeopardy’s “Power Players Week” alongside Chuck Todd and S.E. Cupp as part of a variation on the Celebrity Jeopardy theme. Franzen flubbed a few questions about Shakespeare which, ironically, served to help dispel some of the “old curmudgeon” reputation that has followed him for years. This piece from The Millions on the case for non-Ikea writing in the Age of Franzen might interest you.
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Kind of Bloop
Kind of Bloop: An 8-Bit Tribute to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue
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Pirates Write Books Too
Actor Mackenzie Crook (think tall, gangly pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean) tells Telegraph WordUp! Festival that writing his first children’s book, The Windvale Sprites, was the most nerve-wracking test of his career.
Significant Thinking
“Over the course of our conversation, I’ve come to understand that he has not written (Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings) to provoke or to engender a self-serving sense of shock; he has written with a belief in the possibilities of liminal space and in the revelations that occur at the point of tension. The result is a book that jars, unequivocally, and that disquietingly brings to the surface the anguish of past and present America.” Stephen O’Connor’s poetic reimagining of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved Sally Hemings has certainly raised some eyebrows. This interview with Melody Nixon at BOMB gives O’Connor a platform from which to explain his idea.
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Bibliotherapy for Fiction Lovers
Ceridwen Dovey asks, can reading make you happier?
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Wow. That is incredibly depressing.
During my ill-advised attempt to major in pre-med, I dissected an annelid worm to learn about its anatomy and ended up with a mushy mess. Reminds me of this.
Went to see an absolutely wonderful film “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” recently. There is a scene set in Istanbul. The lead character’s New York investment company has come to evaluate a struggling Turkish publishing company for a possible takeover and asset sale. One of the investment bankers comments that he had “evaluated” several other publishing companies during a meeting with the local publisher. The latter commented (to paraphrase) ‘So you think you can you evaluate me?” There are a million implications in the way the actor delivered that line.