Last October marked the release of a new volume in The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway. Spanning three years in the writer’s early twenties, the letters in the volume track events including his first bullfight, the birth of his son Jack and the publication of his first collection of stories and poems. In The New York Review of Books, Edward Mendelson reads through the new volume. This might also be a good time to read our own Michael Bourne on A Farewell to Arms.
Long and Deep
Stephen FryTube
Some kind soul has uploaded all of Stephen Fry’s QI (Quite Interesting) to YouTube. Enjoy.
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That Moment When
“I can still remember with complete clarity the way I felt when whatever it was came fluttering down into my hands that day 30 years ago on the grass behind the outfield fence at Jingu Stadium; and I recall just as clearly the warmth of the wounded pigeon I picked up in those same hands that spring afternoon a year later, near Sendagaya Elementary School. I always call up those sensations whenever I think about what it means to write a novel.” Haruki Murakami on “The Moment [He] Became a Novelist,” excerpted on Lit Hub from the new double edition of his first novels, Wind/Pinball.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Wright, Santoro, Black
Lawrence Wright’s exposé of Scientology, Going Clear, is out today. Also out are The Boy by Lara Santoro and debut novel The Drowning House by Elizabeth Black. Our recently published Most Anticipated books of 2013 has much more about what’s still to come this year.
“Rainbow Potato Day” Has a Nice Ring
Gaia, Pale Blue Dot, Lonely Planet, etc… It’s time for a new addition to Earth’s list of aliases: the rainbow potato. A new map of our planet’s gravity field reveals the variations in gravitational pull depending on your geographic location.
Can a Song Stop a War?
“What I’ve found is that a lot of soldiers are surprisingly apolitical. Their reality is, ‘Today I’m going to leave the gate for twelve hours, and I’m going to make it back to the dining facility by sundown with the arms and legs of me and my buddies intact.’ So you say, ‘Well, what about the Project for the New American Century and the preexisting agenda blah blah blah?’ They go, ‘Yeah, that’s cool, but I have to get through today.’ So their reality is not a political reality as much as it’s, ‘If I’m driving by this piece of garbage, will it blow up?'” Revisit this old interview with Henry Rollins over at Guernica Magazine, which manages the nearly impossible: to be both level-headed and political.
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Blind Date with Dostoevsky
At the Paris Review Daily, Elif Batuman walks us through part one of her 12-hour blind date with Dostoevsky. (via Book Bench)
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