Word came out yesterday that Jonathan Galassi and Year in Reading alum Mona Simpson will join the Paris Review editorial board. Former editors both — Galassi edited the magazine’s poetry, while Simpson edited its fiction — the two will join Rose Styron, Jeffrey Eugenides and other notable figures on the board. Simpson also has a new novel coming out in April.
New Paris Review Board Members
Leigh Stein Two-Fer
What They Want
Among the raft of news stories that came out about Facebook recently, you may have missed the company’s quiet revolution in grammar, signified by its adoption of the much-debated singular “they.” If thinking about this change makes you queasy, just remember that singular “they” has been around since the days of Chaucer. (Related: Fiona Maazel on bad grammar.)
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The Différance Between Biography and Life
"Biography, even those of intellectual figures, assumes a general reader, a reader who does not understand or want to understand the ideas of its subject. The biography of a philosopher magnifies this approach, turning its attention simply to the 'significant events' in the life of the philosopher." Derrida: the impossible biography?
The Lost Books
Over at NPR, Parul Sehgal recommends five books “that have been restored to us, that have been reissued, reimagined or — in one instance — presumed lost and discovered for the first time.”
Drawing the Line
Recommended Reading: On the dark, subversive adult coloring books of the 60s.
Remembering Sue Grafton
Crime novelist Sue Grafton passed away earlier this week from cancer. Lit Hub and Vulture both have touching tributes to her and her detective series starring Kinsey Millhone. "Grafton belonged to a cluster of female authors who viewed the private-detective subgenre, previously dominated by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Grafton’s own hero, Ross Macdonald, in desperate need of subverting" and "The annual release of her latest Kinsey Millhone novel was, for generations of devotees, one of the year’s premier literary events. " Rest in peace Ms. Grafton.