The devastating images of Syria shot by Franco Pagetti have been collected into a series entitled Veiled Aleppo. Over at The New Republic, Geoff Dyer writes about one of them. It’s an image, Dyer observes, that features “symbols … of the death throes not of a city but of film.”
Geoff Dyer on Pagetti’s Syria
Weekend Links
George Saunders is the subject of one of Deborah Solomon’s wacky interviews in the New York Times. (via Ed)Scott gets a byline in the SF Chronicle for his review of Duchess of Nothing by Heather McGowan.Elizabeth Crane summarizes the Tom Cruise flick Minority Report like only she can.”A rare collection of Dracula-related books is to be handed over to Dublin City Library.” I had no idea Bram Stoker was Irish.
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For the Birds
It’s not easy being a seagull. Over at the London Review of Books, Mary Wellesley takes a sympathetic look at how the much-maligned bird has been treated throughout the history of literature. Afterwards, let this essay from The Millions by Kristen Scharold on the joys of birdwatching lift your spirits a bit.
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Translating Anna Karenina
“How earnest, ironic, condescending, moralistic and simply funny a Tolstoy should the translator inhabit? Perhaps the only way to render Tolstoy’s variable voice is to continue producing ever-varying translations.” Masha Gessen looks at the latest English translations of Anna Karenina and breaks down their nuances of word choice and accumulated meaning for The New York Times Book Review, and along the way she questions the novel’s most famous line: just how alike are happy families? How can we know?
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Are You Experienced?
Who’s the Jimi Hendrix of Wordstock? Though it is unlikely to become a lasting cultural landmark the caliber of Woodstock, the recent Wordstock festival in Portland was nonetheless a runaway success for its 6,000 attendees. This piece on the London Book Fair has a decidedly different tone.
Gay Goth Look
“JUST STRAIGHT UP STANDING ON THE EDGE OF A CLIFF YELLING AT THE NIGHT,” and other portraits of the inimitable Greek poet Sappho, ranked in order of how bummed out she looks.