The brand new Library of Birmingham opens next week, and the gigantic structure is said to be “Europe’s largest public library.” In addition to its modern architecture, the facility also offers “a room from the 19th Century … to house one of the UK’s most important Shakespeare collections.”
Europe’s Largest Public Library Opens
Scrutinizing Letters from Sylvia Plath
Anwen Crawford reflects on newly published letters from Sylvia Plath; “The belief among many of Plath’s devotees seems to be that if we can get clear of other people’s fingerprints on her texts, allowing Plath to ‘fully narrate her own autobiography,’ as the editors here describe it, we will at last solve the riddle of her. The extremities of her poetry will balance against the circumstances of her life; the latter will equal the former. But her griefs were ordinary; it is what she did with them that wasn’t. Plath turned her common sorrows—dead father, mental illness, cheating husband—into something like an origin story for pain itself, as if her own pain preceded the world.” In the New Yorker
Heti and Didion, Chatting It Up
J.D. Salinger at Home
The new J.D. Salinger exhibit at the New York Public Library includes a hand-drawn mock-up of the minimalist book covers that accompany his works.
●
●
●
Weird: from wyrd
Odds Against Tomorrow author Nathaniel Rich has three words of advice for would-be writers, and he holds those words to be his personal mantra.
●
●
The ‘I’ has to become ‘you.’
A great profile of Adam Gopnik and his work as an essayist in the Ryerson Review of Journalism.
●
●
New Franzen in 2015
Sound the Franzen alarm! The Corrections and Freedom author will release a new book in 2015. Called Purity, the book will supposedly feature elements of magical realism (or something like it). Head over to Vulture for more.
Julia Alvarez Returns to Poetry to Find Herself
Julia Alvarez discusses why poetry, rather than fiction, gives her access to a better understanding of herself.
●
●
●