Recommended Reading: An excerpt from The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 in which the author has dinner with Helen Keller.
Twain and Keller
Bright Indeed
Jane Campion‘s Bright Star was released in theaters today. Read the New York Times‘ favorable review and watch a clip of Campion’s take on the romance between Romantic poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). According to papers on both coasts, it is Cornish who shines brightest: the NYT applauds her “mesmerizing vitality and heart-stopping grace.” You may recognize Whishaw as the demented/gifted perfumier Jean-Baptiste Grenouille from Tom Tykwer‘s adaptation of Patrick Suskind‘s 2001 novel Perfume: The Story of a Murder.
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Irony and Equanimity
Recommended Reading: Critic James Wood for the New Yorker on one of the most significant literary heroes of the Holocaust, Primo Levi. The three-volume Complete Works of Primo Levi is out this week.
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The Poem Heard Round the World
“It’s really strange to have the success of a poem be so directly tied to people processing grief. It’s a strange thing, because it’s a blessing and a curse.” The Rumpus interviews poet Maggie Smith about her new collection, Good Bones, her viral poem that shares its name, and her craft. From our archives: Smith’s collection was featured in our round-up of October’s Must-Read Poetry.
Dangerous Novels
“The idea that novels could be dangerous seems largely have fallen by the wayside, which does raise the question of how today’s newer sources of entertainment and information will look to the critics of the future. In 50 years, maybe we’ll be lamenting our failure to read enough Internet.” Anna North writes about the distant time “When Novels Were Bad For You” for The New York Times.
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Hitchens on Mamet
It almost sounds too terrifying to be true. Your book is reviewed by Christopher Hitchens in the New York Times Book Review and he opens with: “This is an extraordinarily irritating book” (and it gets worse from there, and deservedly so). It happened to David Mamet and his new book The Secret Knowledge.
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Notebook on Cities and Words
“We believe in the digital with abandon. So when something of artisanal quality is placed in our hands, or we see something hanging on a wall drawn by an actual hand, we feel a little shock. We remember how to feel something. Maybe not quite an emotion, but the touch of paper does something to us. We use our senses again.” Celebrating fifty years of the French publisher L’école des Loisirs, Gnaomi Siemens reflects on the power of hand-drawn images and the future of the book.
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