Out this week: The Angel of Losses by Stephanie Feldman; Charleston by Margaret Bradham Thornton; Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya; The Home Place by Carrie La Seur; Lucky Us by Amy Bloom; and Tigerman by Nick Harkaway (which I wrote about for our Great 2014 Book Preview).
Tuesday New Release Day: Feldman; Thornton; Akhtiorskaya; La Seur; Bloom; Harkaway
Step Aside Shakes
Hold on to your starched collars: In breaking Shakespeare news, Oxford University Press announced that in its new edition of the complete works of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe will receive credit as co-author on the Henriad plays. And if you’re really tired of Will getting all the credit, you’ll enjoy our recent piece about the surge of interest in Ben Jonson, who’s basically the Third Tenor to their more famous voices.
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This Is Just To Say
“’This Is Just To Say’ is magical because of this personal, endless quality to it,” writes Jezebel’s Kate Dries in her exploration of the poem’s prevalence among Twitter comedians. Meanwhile Andrew Epstein remarks in a supplementary blog post, “I guess this is just to say that the Jezebel piece reminded me that Kenneth Koch was remixing and spoofing [William Carlos] Williams almost 50 years before anyone ever dreamt of Twitter.”
You Are Not the Reader
Whether it’s the new compound word “babymommas,” the Mortal Kombat reference, or the phrase “skeedaddle face smash,” I feel compelled to recommend to you this story in PANK, which takes the form of several letters addressed to Maury Povich.
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to throwback— / and to hell with everything else!
Recommended Viewing: 1958 footage of the unveiling of Moscow’s six-meter high monument to Vladimir Mayakovsky. And while you’re at it, read his poem, “An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovksy In A Summer Cottage,” which features one of the best closing lines in literature.
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Got Two and a Half Days to Kill?
Hachette Audio has composed a 56-hour long audiobook version of Infinite Jest. In case you’re wondering: no, they don’t read the endnotes; they’re provided as a “bonus PDF.” Also, The Huffington Post gathered two audio excerpts.
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A Soviet Gollum
This week in beautiful books: Eugène Delacroix once illustrated Goethe’s Faust, and Goethe himself claimed the resulting lithographs “surpassed my own vision.” A full version of the work is now available online. And in a slightly more light-hearted vein, English Russia has found and scanned a delightful Soviet version of The Hobbit, complete with a Gollum straight out of Dr. Seuss.