Rafael Alcides Perez, one of Cuba’s most renowned poets and public intellectuals, has resigned from the Association of Cuban Writers and Artists because of “government restrictions he is being subjected to,” reports the Havana Times. You can read some of his work (in Spanish) over here, here, and here.
Renowned Cuban Poet Resigns from Nation’s Association of Writers and Artists
Jack Ryan is Real
Jack Ryan really exists and even teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy. Vulture’s Dan Solomon met the real Jack Ryan and discussed what it’s like to have the same name as Tom Clancy’s hero. No, he has never used the connection as a pick-up line. Pair with: Our in memoriam of Clancy.
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Mary McCarthy’s Recycled Fiction
Perhaps best known for her fiction, specifically her classic The Group, Mary McCarthy became a novelist almost by chance. “McCarthy was good at recycling – a term which she used herself – and good, also, as she admitted, at plagiarizing her own life. Nevertheless, her fiction lives, and some of it has been highly influential.” Margaret Drabble takes us through McCarthy’s major works of fiction, featured in Mary McCarthy: The Complete Fiction which was released this year in a deluxe collection for the very first time.
More Apocalypse Now, Please
Can’t get your fill of end-of-the-world scenarios? Playboy has a list of five new books to give you your eschatological fill. We have a few recent pieces about literary apocalypses too: reviews of Alan Moore‘s Jerusalem (here) and Colson Whitehead‘s The Underground Railroad (here), and Dana Spiotta‘s interview with After James author Michael Helm. Go forth and destroy (in your minds).
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True Coffeeshop Story
“Literary interviews became popular in the eighteen-eighties, but Richard Altick, the late professor of Victorian literature at Ohio State University, traces the public fascination with writers’ homes at least as far back as the eighteen-forties, when there was a vogue for books describing the houses and landscapes of famous authors, complete with engravings and, later, photographs.” On the strangeness of literary celebrity.
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The Master Gets a Trailer
The trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s forthcoming film The Master was released this week. The film will be about a mercurial religion called “The Cause,” and the whole thing appears to be based on L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology.
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The Investigation of Feeling
“I think it’s important that poets exist in societies because they exist in the realm of affect. Feeling is important to them. How people feel, what they feel, what breaks them, how trauma resonates through their lives… that’s a legitimate space in poetry. It’s a legitimate space for investigation.” Aaron Coleman interviews Citizen author Claudia Rankine about intimacy, her writing process, and her experience in an MFA program.
Some New Releases: Kingsolver, Pynchon, Plath
Today arrives Barbara Kingsolver’s latest, Lacuna, “an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover.” Also out are a couple more of those nifty “Olive Editions” from HarperCollins, this time of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Update: There’s a new edition of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation too.
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Quick Notes
The Washington Post discusses the literary pedigree of the town where I was born, went to college, and got married.A good review of Jonathan Lethem’s new collection of essays, The Disappointment Artist in the New York Observer.Got a nice note from Ulrich Baer, editor and translator of a new book put out by the Modern Library called The Poet’s Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke. Sound interesting. Have a look.Why we blog.
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