Recommended listening: 19 Rare Recordings of Famous Authors Reading, as compiled by Mental Floss, including the likes of Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway and Flannery O’Connor. For a different perspective on the word “rare” as applied to digital culture, be sure to read Rex Sorgatz‘s recent piece for Medium, “You Need to Hear this Extremely Rare Recording.”
Walt Whitman Reads
A Classic Drawing
“There is always something lost, or exchanged, when the imagined world evoked by the written word, unique for every reader, is replaced by a provided set of visual references. In this particular case, the artist is faced with translating the unbelievable, even the metaphysical, into visual imagery, and within a relatively constrained form.” Jenna Brager on Hope Larson’s graphic novel adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time.
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Four Legs Good
This week in book-related infographics: a look at “Memorable Animals from Literature” ranging from Moby Dick to Snowball to Jonathan Livingston Seagull. After all, lest we forget, “four legs good, two legs bad.”
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On Stage With Myself
It looks like today is your lucky day. This piece from The Literary Hub gives you two for the price of one: first, there’s Herta Muller’s gorgeous take on the poetry of Liu Xia, and next, a careful selection of those very same poems.
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Something Out of Something
BOMB Magazine is collaborating with Farrar, Straus & Giroux to commence their “Something Out of Something” design contest. Participating designers, writers, and artists are invited to “draw inspiration from the written work of Israeli short story writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret to create visual art of their own.” Winners will receive $500, a personalized copy of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, and their artwork’s appearance in a Keret story or film. You can read the full details on the contest’s Tumblr and Facebook pages.
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Leave Elena Alone
We can’t stop gobbling up Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, but we also won’t stop asking who Elena Ferrante really is. Why do we need to know the author’s true identity, asks Electric Literature? (Our own Michael Schaub revealed that he was Elena Ferrante earlier this year.)
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