Don’t expect to hear from Alan Moore anytime soon. He is withdrawing from public life after accusations that his comics include racist characters and too much sexual violence toward women according to an interview with Pádraig Ó Méalóid. He also took the opportunity to disparage society’s obsession with superheroes, which probably won’t win him any more fans. “To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children’s characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence.”
Blame the Superheroes
Why Pick One?
Does what you read affect your sex life? Does it help you come of age? Is it therapeutic?
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Biography and Reputation
Penelope Fitzgerald has been getting a lot of attention lately, largely due to Hermione Lee‘s newest biography. In an article for the Paris Review, Bridget Read considers the impact a better understanding of Fitzgerald’s life could have on her modern reputation, and argues that “it is not extraordinary that she became a prize-winning novelist, though you may have heard otherwise. … It is vital to emphasize that Fitzgerald’s novels were not achieved in spite of her domestic life; they were borne directly out of it. Her work is radical in that it suggests that, in fact, a feminine experience, a liminal experience, might be better equipped than a male one to address the contradictions of human existence taken up by the greatest literature.”
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The Future Is Unwritten
It turns out that books by self-publishers and small presses are eating away at the Big Four’s market share. Pair with this series from The Millions about the future of the book.
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Self-Publishing like a Woolf
“History is littered with poets… who set up their own presses to publish their work, because it was so different from the normal forms of the time. Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard are one example- they started their own press called the Hogarth Press (it is still going today) to publish collections of their work.” Self-publishing is something we’ve written about many times before, but Sarah Gonnet raises a good point – self-publishing isn’t truly a new phenomenon, and it does allow for a great deal of creative freedom.
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HMH Broke
With debts and liabilities in excess of $1 billion, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has officially filed for bankruptcy.
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Robin Coste Lewis on the Comfort of Literature
Robin Coste Lewis shares how she makes her students feel safe during uncertain times by providing refuge in art.
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Withdrawing IS retreating.
Moore has “withdrawn” from interviews and the comics biz before. (Remember when he was going off to be a magician?) He’s too prolix for this to last.