“Repressed homosexual yearnings certainly would account for some of the more striking of [Franz] Kafka’s darker preoccupations,” writes John Banville in his investigation of the writer’s personal life and psychology.
“Kafka was a son of Prague to his phthisic fingertips”
Poetry Can Be Anything
“He taught me that poetry can be anything and with that comes great freedom.” Reminiscences by a former student of the poet John Ashbery upon his death. And for a contemporary take on the question of just what, exactly, poetry is and/or might be, see our recent conversation between Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Wallace, Kingsolver, Schutt, Millet, Kramer, Wagman, Gillespie, Pullman, Sacks, Jackson
There are plenty of new books to this week to fill that post-election void: Both Flesh and Not: Essays, a posthumously published collection from David Foster Wallace; Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior; Prosperous Friends by Christine Schutt; Magnificence by Lydia Millet; and These Things Happen, a debut by longtime TV writer Richard Kramer. From the indies, we have The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets by Diana Wagman and Keyhole Factory by William Gillespie. Also out are Philip Pullman's new version of Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm; Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks; and a big new Michael Jackson biography by a former Rolling Stone editor.
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New Borges Editions
These new Penguin Classics editions of Jorge Luis Borges' essays and poetry make a nice set, with the covers of each of the five books displaying a different rendering of Borges' portrait.
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Living Characters
"I don’t think writing the truth makes you strong by default. I think it makes you vulnerable, which in turn can make you strong." Amy Jo Burns writes for Ploughshares about the difficulties of "Writing About Other People" and the upcoming publication of her debut memoir, Cinderland.
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English Major Drama
At the Missouri Review blog, our own Tess Malone writes about the supposed death of the English major, which has lost a considerable amount of popularity in the last forty years in favor of “practical disciplines.” Among other things, she links to New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier’s Brandeis commencement speech, which I wrote about a few weeks ago.
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Plea of Innocence
Recommended Reading: On the ethics of self-publishing or: Can a convicted serial killer publish his version of the story?
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A Special Kind of Hell
It seems to be true that everyone has an opinion on Donald Trump. In private letters now up for auction, Harper Lee compared Trump’s Atlantic City Taj Mahal resort to hell on earth. Pair with Gabriel Brownstein’s recent essay on Trump as reality turned to cliche.
Abandoned
What are readers to do when authors disown their work?
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