Adding to the general hand-wringing over the state of the humanities, Lee Siegel contradicts Leon Wieseltier’s lament that fewer college students are majoring in literature by contending that modern literature courses ruin the joy of reading. “For every college professor who made Shakespeare or Lawrence come alive for the lucky few,” he writes, “there were countless others who made the reading of literary masterpieces seem like two hours in the periodontist’s chair.” (You can also read a similar argument from a humanities professor in The New Republic.)
More on the Ailing Humanities
The Doctor Zhivago Plot
The CIA was known for unorthodox espionage techniques during the Cold War, but using Doctor Zhivago to undermine the U.S.S.R. is one of the strangest. The CIA helped print and distribute the banned book because it would make Soviets wonder “what is wrong with their government, when a fine literary work by the man acknowledged to be the greatest living Russian writer is not even available in his own country in his own language for his own people to read.”
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Big Abroad
An Iranian opposition leader said Gabriel García Márquez’s News of a Kidnapping accurately reflected his life under house arrest. As a result, the book is flying off the shelves in Tehran. But why do you think Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is so big in the UK?
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Football Fiction
Recommended Listening: Michael Nye reading his new short story about a former NFL lineman, “Beauty in the Age of Chaos and Savagery,” for The Kenyon Review. For more Nye, read his 2013 Year in Reading post.
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Zadie Smith’s Big Week
Oh, look, the Paris Review freed Zadie Smith’s “Big Week” from the clutches of their paywall. (Bonus: you can subscribe to a dual subscription to both the Paris Review and the London Review of Books all summer long.)
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The real Daisy Buchanan
“The poor boy losing the rich girl is a common theme in Fitzgerald’s work, and the original model was surely his relationship with Ginerva King.” AKA the real Daisy Buchanan, who, might I note, looks nothing at all like Carey Mulligan.
Franz Kafka: The Video Game
I hope the Franz Kafka video game isn’t anything like the Franz Kafka airport.
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