The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, the first book published in English, recently sold at auction for almost 2 million dollars.
The Recuyell Sells
I wonder if Garth speaks Hungarian?
László Krasznahorkai is giving a reading in NYC, and our own Garth Risk Hallberg is acting as host. You might also enjoy this: Paul Morton interviewed Krasznahorkai for The Millions just last month.
Purity Coming to TV
If you enjoyed Jonathan Franzen’s Purity, I have some exciting news for you. Multiple networks are bidding for TV adaptation rights for a show starring Daniel Craig. For a refresher, check out our own Lydia Kiesling’s review of the novel.
This Could Be Big
After winning a $100,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, what do you do for an encore? How about staging “fifty days of lectures, discussions, and debates” about what the future ought to look like? How about enlisting the likes of Laurie Anderson, Samuel Delany, Rachel Kushner, and Norman Rush as ringmasters? How about having the entire thing take place in structures designed by artists José León Cerrillo and Adrián Villar Rojas? Triple Canopy‘s “Speculations” occupies MoMA’s P.S. 1 this summer
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Ghosts in the Stacks
A voracious reader named “Chuck Finley” was such a prolific library patron that he singlehandedly increased a Florida branch’s circulation by 3.9%. But there’s a problem: he’s not real. (h/t Kirstin Butler.)
“The Book the Internet Was Invented For”
On the infinite recreation and reimagining of Finnegans Wake, a book that was “crying out for the invention of the web, which would enable the holding of multiple domains of knowledge in the mind at one time that a proper reading requires,” from The Guardian.
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Anthony Shadid Dies in Syria
It was shocking to find that New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid had died, of an asthma attack of all things, while reporting in Syria, especially when he’s put himself in harm’s way so many other times and emerged unscathed. Tyler Hicks, the Times photographer who was with Shadid when he died and who escorted his body out of Syria was, along with Shadid, among of the four journalists captured and held in Libya less than a year ago in the early days of the uprising there. Shadid’s reporting was brave and essential there and elsewhere. His death comes just weeks before the release of a memoir, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East.
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“Deceptively spare”
“The art style also changes from chapter to chapter — some panels fill the pages to the edges and are overwhelming in their dark palette; some seem ordinary in proportion, confident; others fill the space around small figures with words, words, words; and others still have a minimalist, sketch-like quality and barely occupy the page at all — and they aren’t always chapters, or even stories, in the traditional sense.” On MariNaomi’s Dragon’s Breath and Other Stories.