Not caught up on the emerging Hermione/Ron scandal? Here’s a recap: a few days ago, J.K. Rowling not only said in an interview conducted by Emma Watson that she regretted pairing up Harry Potter’s best friends, she also said that Harry and Hermione should have ended up together. “[Pairing Hermione and Ron] was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility,” she said. “Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.” (This might be a good time to revisit Michelle Dean on the series.)
Not a Magical Pairing
Tuesday New Release Day: Whitehead, Jin, Gray
Colson Whitehead’s zombie thriller Zone One hits shelves today, as does Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem. Also out is The Journals of Spalding Gray.
●
●
Poetry is Back (or it Never Left)
●
●
Computers Grading Papers?
The Hewlett Foundation is offering $100,000 to anyone who can create an “automated essay grader” (and in the process cost thousands of TAs their jobs).
●
●
The Relevance of Plasma
The vigilant excavators at Longform have dug up a fairly old piece, written by the essayist Jo Ann Beard, on a time in her life taken up by cagey dogs, vanishing husbands and the plasma in Saturn’s rings.
The Idealistic Hero
“What is missing from Testimony is the customary idealistic hero, the one last encountered in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass who doesn’t avert his eyes from suffering and sordidness, but who nevertheless is full of hope for a better future. Testimony is a corrective, an anti-epic.” Charles Simić recounts Charles Reznikoff’s long poem Testimony: The United States (1885-1915): Recitative in the NYRB.
●
●