Mark Twain first rose to fame as the author of an essay about a frog-jumping contest in California. Originally titled “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” the essay went viral in America’s biggest newspapers, eventually inspiring the New York Tribune to write of Twain that “no reputation was ever so rapidly won.” Yet the humor which made the essay so popular is often lost on modern audiences, in no small part because, as Ben Turnoff writes in Lapham’s Quarterly, frontier humor isn’t funny if there’s no Wild West.
A Jump in Stature
New Vessel Press Brings International Literature to the US
New Vessel Press is a new publisher specializing in the translation of foreign literature into the English language. Translator Ross Uffberg and journalist Michael Z. Wise started it last year. Next month, they’ll publish their first book, The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal, and they have plans for quite a few more as well.
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Science Genius
The Science Genius Initiative is a pilot project organized by Rap Genius, science teachers from ten New York City public schools, and GZA. Together, the group hopes “to change the way city teachers relate to minority students, drawing not just on hip-hop’s rhymes, but also on its social practices and values.” Indeed, as the Wu-Tang Clan emcee – who’s been working with Neil DeGrasse Tyson and MIT physicists for his new album – believes science is worth studying because it “unlocks the key to the universe, and the mysteries we don’t know.”
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Even more Girls
Okay, so earlier this week I mentioned Emily Nussbaum's excellent profile of Lena Dunham for New York Magazine. Now Lorrie Moore's written one too, for The New Yorker blog. The short piece, as you might imagine, is a near perfect meeting of author and subject; who could be better at writing about Girls?
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The Best of 19th Century British Lit
If you don't have any weekend plans, we suggest you spend your time on the British Library's new Victorian and Romantic section of Discovering Literature. The site features 1,200 literary treasures, including a manuscript of Jane Eyre and 20 short documentaries.
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Preview of It Chooses You
To celebrate the printing of Miranda July's It Chooses You in paperback McSweeney's is offering a free excerpt from the book. Also see our brief review of It Chooses You and the excellent Onion article wondering what July's whole "thing" is, anyways.
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A Novel Idea for The Life of Pi’s Film Adaptation
In lieu of an official trailer, the producers of the film adaptation of Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi have decided to release entire (but short) scenes of the movie one at a time. Here’s the first installment. After watching it, you may want to check out some other tiger literature, and luckily Nina Martyris can help you out with that.
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