Recommended Reading: Mallory Ortberg wrote an entire short story based on stage directions at The Toast.
“Exeunt all, except the Clown.”
The Heyday of Memoir
Recommended Reading: This review of Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir over at Slate. For a bit on Karr and some other Catholic writers with whom she is often associated, here’s an essay from The Millions.
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Anxiety of Influence
“Cursed Child … is an act of overreach that feels mandated not by [J.K.] Rowling’s desire to fill out details but by an entertainment industry intent on reviving and rebooting anything that’s ever made money.” Sophie Gilbert reviews Harry Potter and the Cursed Child for The Atlantic.
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Now That’s Will Power
How dedicated is Robert Caro to his task of identifying and faithfully portraying the character of Lyndon Johnson? So dedicated that he turned down free tickets to see Bryan Cranston’s play about the 36th President of the United States of America.
The Last Train from Hiroshima
Henry Holt & Company stopped printing and selling Charles Pellegrino‘s The Last Train From Hiroshima last week, following allegations of fraudulent sources and fabrication in the work. The New York Times examines the debacle: “If book publishers are supposed to be the gatekeepers,” novelist and Studio 360 host Kurt Anderson asks, “tell me exactly what they’re closing the gate to.”
Authenticity and New Orleans
Writing for n+1’s City by City series, Moira Donegan remarks on the “self-defeating contradictions” of working at a nonprofit in New Orleans. It’s a town, she writes, where most arrive to either “perform charity or to party,” and where, she feels, “many of the people who … come to help the city [are] also hurting it.” In certain ways, the piece can be read as being in conversation with Duncan Murrell’s 2012 essay for Oxford American about authenticity, preservation, posterity, and the Big Easy.
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Emily Pullen on e-readers
Bookseller and blogger Emily Pullen discusses the e-reading experience in this morning’s Shelf Awareness: “I have noticed that when I read on the device, my attention span is somewhat short. I rarely read for more than an hour–usually about 20 minutes. It’s not because it is uncomfortable for my eyes or my hands. Instead I just don’t get as immersed.”
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Family Matters
Piggybacking off a brief aside in Ian Frazier’s new review of James Agee’s Cotton Tenants, Claire Kelley explores an odd and intriguing question: was Agee related to Walt Whitman? (Related: Mallory Ortberg on the probability that Whitman did the dirty with Oscar Wilde.)