Recommended Reading: Charles Simic’s ode to Summertime. (Trust me, you’ll need this. It’s brutal outside and we need to remember why we even bother with it.)
“What kind of birdie are you?”
RIP Mark Strand
In memory of Mark Strand, who passed away on Saturday, the Paris Review Daily published a manuscript page from “A Piece of the Storm,” a poem that appeared in Strand’s collection A Blizzard of One. They also included links to several poems of his they published, as well as his Art of Poetry interview.
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2017’s Independent Bookstore Day
Next Saturday (April 29) is Independent Bookstore Day! If you’re looking for a place to celebrate, check out our staff recommendations of tried and true mainstays. You can also map out the stores Janet Potter’s “bookstore resume,” which she freely admits has taken “the shape of a relationship history.”
Up South
“Young black fiction writers in the U.S. often face a strange obstacle as they try to figure out who they are — it’s called American literature. A high number of pre-civil-rights-era novels by white American writers are likely to include tossed-off racial slurs and/or stock black characters, some of which make racially conscious readers want to hurl the book across the room, even if the wooly-headed pickaninnies are only peeking around a doorjamb on one page out of 400. There are exceptions, but shockingly few. You always have to brace yourself — always.” James Hannaham writes about growing up in Yonkers but finding himself in Southern literature.
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Harvard University Press’s Redistribution of Wealth
Flushed with cash after the runaway success of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the Harvard University Press has decided to offer a 20% discount off two dozen works on capitalism and its discontents. Get to it while the gettin’s good.
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Imani Perry Looks at Richard Wright With Fresh Eyes
Imani Perry delves into The Man Who Lived Underground, a previously unpublished novel by Richard Wright that sheds a new perspective on his legacy.
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Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream
How did Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean create one of DC’s most popular comics in history? The Guardian finds out the inspiration behind The Sandman. McKean shares the stories behind his favorite covers, and Gaiman also addresses his resemblance to Dream. “I suppose he looks like me, though. But that’s one of those peculiar things where you gradually start to look like your dog.”
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