Recommended Reading: Alexandra Schwartz on Boris Vian’s Mood Indigo.
L’Ecrivain
Appearing Elsewhere
Millions writer Sonya Chung has a trenchant essay up at Huffington Post on the topic of writing and motherhood: “Art Before Life: Questioning the Parenthood Question.”
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Rachman’s Single
Tom Rachman, author of Millions Hall of Famer The Imperfectionists, has a new short story out as a Kindle Single: “The Bathtub Spy.”
Knausgaard: Horror and Delight
The third volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard‘s My Struggle was released on Tuesday. In a recent review for The Daily Beast, Ted Gioia argues that “we read [My Struggle] with horror and delight, because the protagonist—who is Karl Ove Knausgaard himself—is determined to reveal every embarrassing and shameful detail of his past life. Imagine a literary novel with grand Proustian ambitions, but combined with the ethos of those creepy Jackass-type reality shows in which contestants get a dose of renown by making fools of themselves. That’s the spirit of My Struggle.” For a second opinion, be sure to check out our own review of the novel’s earlier installments.
Songs of Zora
Recommended Listening: Florida Memory’s great collection of Zora Neale Hurston singing.
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“Refuge in the bottle and salvation on the page”
Olivia Laing has written an entire book about male writers and their relationships with alcohol, The Trip to Echo Spring, but in a piece for The Guardian she returns to the subject of writers and drink in order to respond to the question, what about women writers? Were any of them alcoholics? “Yes,” she writes, “of course.” She goes on to discuss the lives and work of Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, Elizabeth Bishop and Patricia Highsmith, their reasons for drinking and their experiences in a society much more willing to accept the struggles of men than of women. For more from Laing, be sure to check out her Year in Reading for 2013.
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Pete Campbell is Mr. Darcy
This summer, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis will put on a stage production of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. As they always say: it’s all fun and games until you cast Vincent Kartheiser as Mr. Darcy.