The Paris Review and the 92nd Street Y have long collaborated on a series of onstage conversations with prominent authors. Now, these talks are going to be made available online as part of 92Y’s Poetry Center Online, and also on the Review’s website. Kicking off the first round of videos are talks with Garrison Keillor, Iris Murdoch, and William Styron. Look out in the coming months for more audio with the likes of Maya Angelou, Jamaica Kincaid, and Allen Ginsberg. (Bonus: 92Y has been adding heaps of content to its digital archive all month.)
New Collaboration Between 92Y and The Paris Review
“Ephphatha!”
Recommended Reading: “Saliva” by Álvaro Enrigue, whose English-language debut Hypothermia was published this month by the folks at Dalkey Archive Press.
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Six Books in Twenty Years
“Whatever the facts of her life – whether she turned out to be an ancient man living in the Icelandic interior or a woman waiting tables at a Texan diner – Ferrante writes in an autobiographical mode. That is fuel for the truthers, a sort of literary ankle-flashing. But it is also good cover for another motive: a very contemporary form of envy of another’s autonomous space and their creativity, a rage that while they give us their work, they will not also give us their person.” On a new collection of Elena Ferrante’s letters, interviews and short pieces.
“Then did he see, at long last, that The Google did load.”
H. Jon Benjamin (of Bob’s Burgers notoriety) loaned his voice-over talents to Vulture and McSweeney’s for this 8-bit adaptation of Mike Lacher’s classic piece, “In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed As a Conquering Hero.”
Hard to Categorize
The Naipaul Question, as Morgan Meis calls it, is simple: is V.S. Naipaul too offensive to be taken seriously? His recent biography includes scenes of abuse and moments of straightforward racism. But Meis thinks the issue is more complicated than whether Naipaul is a monster — the author is, in his phrasing, too “protean” to be pinned down.
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Nobel Speculation
With the Nobel Prize for Literature to be awarded on October 7th, speculation is heating up at the Literary Saloon as to who might be this year’s main contenders.
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Is Korean Literature About to Break Out?
Thanks in part to Dalkey Archive Press’s recently announced Library of Korean Literature, works from Korea are poised to reach a broad and welcoming international audience as never before. Yet the country is still “pin[ing] for its own world-famous writer,” writes Craig Fehrman. Perhaps Kim Seong-kon is just what the doctor ordered.
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