Nobel laureate Doris Lessing passed away last night at the age of 94. The author of The Grass is Singing, The Fifth Child and The Golden Notebook took home the Nobel in 2007 for “subjecting a divided civilisation to scrutiny,” in the words of the prize committee.
RIP Doris Lessing
150 New Mark Twains
Just found: 150 new Mark Twain stories, written when the author was a young newspaperman in San Francisco.
Science and literature
Why do we love fiction? The New York Times examines the links between science and literature: “It’s not that evolution gives us insight into fiction … but that fiction gives us insight into evolution.”
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Thirteen Poems
Check out thirteen poems by Lydia Davis in BOMB Magazine. You could also read Adam Boffa’s piece about Davis’s work and Twitter.
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Introducing The Offing
Trend alert: there’s been a surprising proliferation of literary site spinoffs lately. First The Toast began The Butter, and then Electric Literature started Okey-Panky. Now the Los Angeles Review of Books joins the movement with The Offing, an online lit mag launching later this month.
The Interpretation of Dreams
“Why, for instance, did I dream I had surged up through the lawn of Toronto’s Victoria College and clomped into the library, decomposing and covered with mud? The librarian didn’t notice a thing, which, in the dream, I found surprising. Was this an anxiety dream? If so, which anxiety?” Margaret Atwood’s dream diary.
TLAN:WOTFOB Excerpted
Reif Larsen’s “The Crying of Page 45” appears in this month’s issue of The Believer. This clever, inventive essay is excerpted from the book I co-edited The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books. You can get a taste of the piece at The Believer website, but the full essay in all its illustrated glory is available in the print magazine as well as in, of course, the book.
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The Door to Another World
Recommended Reading: A new short story by Whiting Award-winner Alice Sola Kim.
Literary T-Shirts
How would you like to wear your favorite classic novel on your chest?
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