Recommended Listening: an interview with David Foster Wallace recorded the year Infinite Jest was published. Pair with these interviews and thoughts about what we mean when we talk about “rare” recordings.
David Foster Wallace, 1996
Jabberwocky Live
Watch Sir Christopher Lee (aka Lord of the Rings‘ Saruman; Star Wars’ Count Dooku) read Lewis Carroll‘s nonsense poem “Jabberwocky” (from Through The Looking Glass).
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Big, Bent Ears
This week the Paris Review launched a new online series, Big, Bent Ears, a “Serial in Documentary Uncertainty” masterminded by Sam Stephenson and Ivan Weiss. Each installation features “a combination of video, audio, photography, and writing in various arrangements and states of completion,” and the first chapter overlaps Joseph Mitchell and the Big Ears Music Festival even though “the two projects seem to share little: one concerns a wordsmith, a chronicler, and preserver of fading traditions; the other, musicians challenging tradition and musical forms on a sometimes radical basis.”
Translating Wonderland
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of the world’s most translated books. In German alone, there are over 40 different translations. A new project published by Oak Knoll Press devotes three volumes to exploring the challenges of translating Carroll’s wit, puns, and linguistic tricks in 174 languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu.
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Franzen and Oprah: Together at Last?
If Moby Lives is right, the literary beef that erupted when Oprah selected Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections for her book club and he rejected the (in his mind, dubious) honor is about to get a curious denouement. Speculation is that Freedom is poised to become another Oprah selection. And your author suspects that Franzen will be more welcoming this time around. (Oprah sticker haters should probably buy their copies of Freedom now, just to be safe.) Update: The AP confirms and so it begins again.
Empathy for the Devil?
Ruth Franklin of TNR probes the weaknesses of American novels about terrorism.
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