According to The Guardian, “researchers in Australia have developed a computer program which writes its own fables, complete with moral.” No word yet on whether they’re any good.
Computer Fables
Neglected Classics
Readers and writers and professors tend to read and talk about the same books over and over again. Moby-Dick? Check. Anna Karenina? Of course. But what about the books that deserve the same attention and love but don’t seem to get it? There are too many to name, of course, but The American Scholar has put together a list of 10 such “neglected classics.”
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Nimble Publishing
VQR has published an essay by Chris Fischbach of Coffee House Press that provides an overview of some of the innovative small presses at work today. Fischbach specifically mentions Tin House, Melville House and Two Dollar Radio as “nimble” publishing houses that “can try things big publishers might not find worthwhile or consistent with the aims of a traditional publishing program,” such as producing micro-budget films or illustrated versions of classic works of literature.
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Looking at Selma
“A film based on a historical subject, even a beautifully shot one, can remind us without meaning to that although reading in the US is a minority activity, the book is still the only medium in which you can make a complicated argument.” Darryl Pinckney writes about “Some Different Ways of Looking at Selma” for the New York Review of Books. Pair with our own Bill Morris‘s Millions review of the film.
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Different, Quieter Passions
“It soon emerged that there is a uniquely British brand of feeling, a blend of distress and composure marked by a touching compulsion to keep up appearances in the face of interpersonal dissolution. For all its prevalence and subtlety, this mode of engagement is difficult for the uninitiated to decipher or even to discern, and I would have remained oblivious of it if not for the works of Dame Iris Murdoch, a connoisseur of British emotional life in all its baffling permutations.” On Iris Murdoch and the British brand of distress and composure.
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Fork It Over
It has become increasingly common for publications to charge a fee upon submitting work. According to The Atlantic, this practice spells disaster for the writing community at every level. Quit paying out to big journals and just charge yourself the fee instead–here’s a piece on the efficacy of self-publishing.
“Notre Dame is a polarizing place.”
With apologies to Mary McCarthy, our own Bill Morris has revisited memories of his sports-crazed Catholic boyhood in Sunday’s New York Times — specifically why he has been a life-long hater of Notre Dame football.
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