Apart from the fact that Anglo-Indian slang is an interesting topic in its own right, you should read this article simply to reward the writer for this lede: “Pyjamas did not exist until the 19th century.”
Whither the Footy?
Brooklyn Boys I
His new novel, Sunset Park, finds Paul Auster leaving behind the metafictional gamesmanship of his recent work for a look at our new Age of Austerity. This week, he talks to The L Magazine about the neighborhood from which it takes its title and inspiration…
The Ambitions of Oscar Wilde
“I won’t be a dried-up Oxford don, anyhow. I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.” –Oscar Wilde on rejecting a career as a classics scholar. (via Book Bench)
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Translated Books Giveaway
Those who donate to The Center for the Art of Translation get a chance to receive books signed by a pair of the top translators working today, Natasha Wimmer and Breon Mitchell.
Picture of Alienation
In 2006, Gene Luen Yang became the first graphic novelist to be nominated for a National Book Award. Yang earned a nomination in the Young People’s Literature category for the graphic novel American Born Chinese. Now Yang has been nominated a second time, again in the Young People’s Literature category, for a new book, Boxers and Saints. Francoise Mouly and Mina Kaneko talk with Yang at Page-Turner. (You can also read our interview.)
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Charter Schools
Diane Ravitch takes on the documentary Waiting for Superman in the “Myth of Charter Schools” for The New York Review of Books.
Big Fans
Chances are you know (and chances are you wonder why you know) that 50 Shades of Grey started out as a work of Twilight fanfiction. You probably harbor some deep suspicions about the value of fanfiction as a genre. But what if I were to tell you that the prototypical work of fanfiction is… The Gospels?
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