Recommended Reading: Brett Elizabeth Jenkins’s poem “To Get to Zen” at Paper Darts. “you must first lose your/shit in an elevator/in front of a man you do not know.”
Zen State
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski
Following in the footsteps of the recent Pride, Prejudice and Zombies, the Coen Brothers’ cult movie The Big Lebowski has received the Shakespeare treatment.
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Raise a Glass to Kingsley Amis
New Yorkers! Come out tonight and celebrate Kingsley Amis alongside the Volume 1 Brooklyn crew, the New York Review of Books Classics publishers, and also such guests as Parul Sehgal, Rosie Schaap, and Maud Newton. There will be free gin! However if you can’t make it, you can treat yourself to the Kingsley Amis Desert Island Discs from the comfort of your own home. The discs, recorded around the time The Old Devils was published, reveal the author’s views on “novel mechanics,” the “Welsh temperament,” and his affinity for jazz.
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Confessional Criticism
“Contemporary criticism is positively crowded with first-person pronouns, micro-doses of memoir, brief hits of biography. Critics don’t simply wrestle with their assigned cultural object; they wrestle with themselves, as well. Recent examples suggest a spectrum, from reviews that harmlessly kick off with a personal anecdote, to hybrid pieces that blend literary criticism and longform memoir.” On why critics get personal in their essays.
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“It’s why the gift horse is a gift”
Recommended Reading: “The Tiny Men in the Horse’s Mouth” by Matthew Olzmann for New England Review.
Imagination, Memory, a Dictionary
Would Vladimir Nabokov have considered you a good reader? Take this little quiz and find out for yourself. Then, allow Garth Risk Hallberg to explain to you why Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is difficult, but well worth the effort.
It Was Happening
“Stop smoking, first of all, and then don’t hold your breath, don’t cough, do not for any reason pick up heavy packages, boxes, suitcases. Never lean over, or dive headfirst into water. The carnal throes of passion were forbidden, because even an ardent kiss could cause my veins to burst.” At long last, Lina Meruane’s semi-autobiographical novel Seeing Red has been published in English. Meruane has long been hailed as one of the most brilliant South American writers that American readers had probably never heard of.
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A Method to the Madness
All the world is about to become a stage. The Globe Theatre will be performing Hamlet in every country on Earth starting on April 23, 2014, Shakespeare’s 450th birthday. The 205-nation tour should take two years. This is one of many Shakespearean anniversary celebrations including contemporary authors covering his classics.
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