Recommended Reading: Jessica Contrera’s mesmerizing account of a shuttered Waffle House in Bloomington, Indiana. I promise you. This is worth your time.
Bud Powell Says “Goodbye”
Love and Rockets, Once More
Jaime Hernandez speaks to Carolina A. Miranda about revisiting old characters, punk music, Latinx stereotypes, and his characters' origin stories.
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Contemplating a Cross-Country Drive? Grab the Proust Audiobook
Do you have 153 hours to kill? Do you love long French masterworks? If so, the folks at Naxos AudioBooks might have something up your alley. At 120-discs, publisher Nicolas Soames believes his company’s unabridged audiobook for Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past might just be the longest audiobook in existence. (Note: that means you’d still have 23 hours of the audiobook left after making this drive around the country.)
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The Brits Are Wrong…
If you’re not watching Masterpiece Theatre’s toothsome Emma on Sundays, Jane Austen enthusiasts, you should be. No zombies. We promise.
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Presto Manuscript
“What a miracle to find this buried treasure in the archives. To think something as good as this has been lying around there gathering dust.” An unpublished picture book by Maurice Sendak has been found, reports The Guardian; Presto and Zesto in Limboland, co-written with Sendak’s longtime collaborator Arthur Yorinks, is slated for publication next year. We revisited Where the Wild Things Are not long after the site’s founding.
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Two From The Atavist
The Atavist has been killing it lately. Last month, I was riveted by Joshuah Bearman’s outrageous (and completely true) story of one Brit’s attempt to bring a “Baghdad Country Club” to the city’s Green Zone. This month, “Mother, Stranger,” Cris Beam’s account of her abusive mother–a distant relative of William Faulkner–had me on the verge of tears.
Never Comfortable
Recommended Viewing: On the improbable triumph of a young black lesbian poet and the efficacy of mentorship.
One Child Fiction
In 2013, Mo Yan became China’s first resident Nobel Laureate in Literature, which prompted a huge swell of interest in his books in the West. In the Times, Janet Maslin reviews Frog, his latest novel to get an English translation. Sample quote: “Mo Yan, whose real name is Guan Moye, says everything he needs to about the Cultural Revolution with a scene in which Tadpole and other schoolboys eat coal and claim to find it delicious.” You could also read Alan Levinovitz on modern Chinese literature.
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Was just reading this article and musing about its relation to some of the comments on the Millions’ recent article on “John The Posthumous” by Jason Schwartz. The Millions comments raised some interesting questions about complex and simple style.
When I think about a complex, intricately detailed writing style, it bring to mind “My Name Is Red” by Orhan Pamuk. The style is such a perfect match for the setting – the 16th-century Ottoman Empire, and the lead character – a master miniaturist and illuminator of books. The novel is stuffed full of exotic tidbits -figurative art and Islam, tricky marital law issues, weird fantasies. I loved the novel and now pine to visit Istanbul.
In contrast, Ms. Contrera’s story is built up of deceptively simple observations, in a plain “Midwestern” style, that coalesce to creative a massive emotional impact. The style made me think of flat Indiana roads and sunshine.
I loved both pieces, and found the choice of style perfect for the story told. As my buddy Randy at the Y security desk says regularly, “It’s all good!”
Beautiful piece. Visits to that Waffle House were a cornerstone of my 4 years in Bloomington.