This week Uncanny Valley Press released Leave Luck to Heaven, Brian Oliu’s collection of lyric essays based on “the weird, painful things we made NES games carry for us because we didn’t know where else to put them.” To get a taste for Oliu’s style, check out “Mile Zero,” which will be featured in a different manuscript down the line.
Brian Oliu’s Video Game Essays
Might Not Our Eyes Adjust
Shall I compare thee to a wormhole? No, this essay on astrophysics and poetry coupled with a poem for Stephen Hawking is most definitely more lovely. Kalpana Narayanan wrote an essay for The Millions on physics, grief, and Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies that may pique your interest.
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The Neglected Nobelist, Neglected No More
Henrik Pontoppidan, the Danish novelist, won the 1917 Nobel Prize for literature. His masterpiece, Lucky Per, has never been available in English. Now – lucky for us – it is. Frederic Jameson reviews it for The London Review of Books.
Where’s Atticus When You Need Him?
Mark Seal explores the ongoing legal battle between Harper Lee and Samuel L. Pinkus, the latter of whom is said to have “’engaged in a scheme to dupe Harper Lee, then 80-years-old with declining hearing and eye sight, into assigning her valuable TKAM [To Kill a Mockingbird] copyright to [Pinkus’s company] for no consideration,’ and then created shell companies and bank accounts to which the book’s royalties were funneled.”
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“Full, unfettered pomp”
On Friday, I wrote about the British writer William Boyd, whose new play, Longing, debuted last week at London’s Hampstead Theatre. The play is based on two of Chekhov’s short stories, one of which (according to Boyd’s new article in The Guardian) sheds light on the great author’s love life. Apparently the young Anton had “at least two dozen” affairs.
Banana Yoshimoto Interview
Banana Yoshimoto, whose novel The Lake was recently shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize, does an interview with Melville House.
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Poem Piece
“Take your pants off / before you fight.” Apparently Yoko Ono’s releasing a new book of poetry.
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