“First, catch your pig.” This is the beginning of Harper Lee’s recipe for cornbread, but it’s not the first time pork has preoccupied her writing. At The Paris Review, Sadie Stein examines the use of ham in Lee’s fiction.
Pork Problem
Grit & Grace
At The New York Times, Stanley Fish on True Grit as “a truly religious movie” in its understanding of the Christian idea of grace.
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Murakami Controversy
Haruki Murakami‘s Norwegian Wood has been dropped from one New Jersey school’s syllabus due to “some words and language that seemed to be inappropriate as far as the parents and some of the kids were concerned.” His publisher A. A. Knopf has issued a statement in response.
Minister of Defense and Propaganda of the New Cinema
Recommended Reading: On the the anticriticism of Jonas Mekas, the “raving maniac of the cinema,” courtesy of The Paris Review.
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Anonymous Authors
Recommended Reading: Art Winslow asks, “did Thomas Pynchon publish a novel under the pseudonym Adrian Jones Pearson?”
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What’s the point?
“What’s the point of reading literature?” Electric Literature shares a video that offers a compelling 4-point answer.
Come On, Karma
From Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice, here are five of the most annoyingly unpunished characters in all of literature. Can we petition to have Daisy Buchanan (The Great Gatsby) added to this list?
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Sam Anderson’s Margins
In 2010, Sam Anderson showed us his Year in Marginalia. This year, he’s taken that show on the road. Or, more accurately, I guess he’s taken it back home.
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