When Damien Searls first read W.G. Sebald, he thought the German writer was uniquely good at factoring historical circumstance into his thinking. Sebald’s unyielding reminders of the horrors of the past were a nice corrective to the feel-good pablums of the ‘90s. But reading Sebald now, Searls thinks something has changed. What happened? The world went online. (Related: Greg Walklin on Sebald’s A Place in the Country.)
Long Memory
The ‘I’ has to become ‘you.’
A great profile of Adam Gopnik and his work as an essayist in the Ryerson Review of Journalism.
More on Maxwell’s
A few weeks ago, our own Nick Moran wrote about the closing of Maxwell’s, a Hoboken landmark that doubles as a restaurant and concert space. Now, at The Paris Review Daily, Josh Lieberman goes to the venue’s last Feelies concert, pointing out that “in no way is Maxwell’s an ideal place to see a show, except that it is.”
Speaking with Ishiguro
Recommended Listening: An interview with Kazuo Ishiguro on Hazlitt’s podcast The Arcade. Our own Lydia Kiesling reviews his latest work, The Buried Giant.
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Just In Time For Valentine’s Weekend
Katia Grubisic reviews The Poetry of Sex, which is Penguin’s new “carnal compilation” covering everything “from love-making to hay-rolling to cuckolding.”
Annals of Translation
Recommended Reading: The largest publishers of translated works in the United States published less in 2015 than they normally do—503 works of fiction down from 597 from the previous year.
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