Tana French pegs the cause of Ireland’s financial crisis on “a total disconnect between action and consequence.” For many Irish citizens since the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, she writes, “their whole sense of a world governed by coherent cause and effect, of their ability to have any agency in their own lives, came under attack.” Bonus: our own Edan Lepucki has previously written about French’s novels and plotting.
Tana French on the Celtic Tiger
“Rote lessons before the air raid drill”
At The Atlantic, Caleb Crain (of Necessary Errors and n+1 fame) writes about the galvanizing effects of memorizing his favorite poem. (If you’re wondering, the poem in question is W.H. Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone.”)
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The Common’s first year in print!
The Common will be celebrating its first year of publication later this month at NYU’s Carter Journalism institute. The celebrations will include a reading from Stephen O’Connor and a performance by the Dog House Band, aka that literary rock group consisting of Sven Birkerts, James Wood, and other writerly musicians.
How to Win
“If you read through all the citations, you’ll start to detect certain patterns. Any aspirant Nobel Prize–winner should take note—these may hold the key to victory.” The Paris Review has read through all of the Nobel Prize-winner citations and came to a couple of conclusions, such as “you should be great… but it also helps if you’re epic. Oh, and fresh!” Pair their piece with our own overview of newest laureate Patrick Modiano’s work, and The New Yorker‘s look into the translation of Nobel Prize-winning authors.
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Paula Meehan on Bees and Bonnets
In September of 2013, Paula Meehan was appointed Ireland’s Professor of Poetry, and the transcript from her first lecture is available online [PDF]. You can learn more about Meehan in her interview with the Wake Forest University Press, and you can check out a video of one her readings over here.
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Art & Illness
At the Guardian, Brian Dillon writes about great creative minds who had fertile imaginations for the maladies that befell them.
William Gass, 1924-2017
“He was a glutton for books who treated each text as a plate he was required to clean.” Author and critic William Gass died this week at 93, reports The Washington Post. The recipient of three National Book Critics Circle awards for criticism and four Pushcart prizes, Gass was awarded the PEN/Nabakov Award for lifetime achievement in 2000. See our reviews of Middle C, a novel that took Gass almost 20 years to finish, and his most recent essay collection Life Sentences, which amply demonstrated his background as “a former philosophy professor, but more appropriately a philosopher of the word and an esthete.” We were also lucky enough to have him pen a Year in Reading entry for us back in 2009: “I miss the leisure that let me read just for fun, not to critique, or pronounce, or even to put on a list, but simply to savor,” Gass lamented. Nonetheless, he continued,“I do, from time to time, pick up old friends who never disappoint but will promise me a page or two of pleasure between art and ordinary life.”