“In the aftermath of tragedies, people become obsessive, do strange things. As the tragedy recedes and is sewn up into the past, these strange things appear increasingly weird to casual observers.” At The Rumpus, our own Lydia Kiesling reviews Donna Tartt’s new novel The Goldfinch, which centers around a fictional bombing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Some very tony shop”
Shock and Auden
A lost journal of W. H. Auden, one of three that the poet is known to have kept, has recently been discovered.
Catherine Havisham. Earlier.
I could explain to you who Catherine was, or I could let you watch Picador’s book trailer for Ronald Frame’s Havisham and let you find out for yourself. The latter seems like much more fun.
●
●
City on a Hill
As the lone mental hospital in The Magic Mountain referred to by its real name, the Hotel Schatzalp is a holy site for many Thomas Mann scholars and fans. At Page-Turner, Sally McGrane writes about the modern hotel, which employs a staff trained to deal with the occasional “literary fanatic.” (It also might be a good time to read Matthew Gallaway on Death in Venice.)
●
●
Joyce Carol Oates on Mourning and Writer as Persona
In the Atlantic‘s annual fiction supplement, Joyce Carol Oates writes about the loss of her husband of 48 years and the split identity of the well-known writer: “My job at the university is to impersonate ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ […] this quasi-public self […] is scarcely visible to me, as a mirror-reflection, seen up close, is scarcely visible to the viewer.”
Founding Father, Remixed
George Washington as you’ve never seen him before: First, a cartoon entitled “Cox and Combs” and second, a live action avant garde take on the founding father.
●
●
Time to get on with it
At Open Letters, Rohan Maitzen writes about her awakening to the chasm between an academic appreciation for books and “a more personal, affective, and engaged vision of criticism. It has been surprising and exciting to me to realize how blinkered I was about non-academic book culture, and chastening to realize how little use my own specialized reading has been as preparation to join in.”
This Job Completes Me
“Now, I ask you, what if all along it was as simple as joining this company to fill the part of me missing? What if some deranged wiring or disease has forced me to isolate myself away instead of considering being part of a team like the one here at your company? I feel pretty good right now, and I’m not even officially part of anything. Just even filling out this application is fixing me.” Quotes from Dan Kennedy’s poetic job interviews.
●
●