The (mostly) true story behind Moby-Dick gets the picture-book treatment in Mocha Dick: The Legend and the Fury.
Mocha Dick
Literary Rivalry
“‘I think she is better than J. L. Borges—who is good, but not all that good!” said poet Elizabeth Bishop of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Bishop was one of Lispector’s first English translators, but also one of her fiercest critics. Alexandra Pechman writes for the Poetry Foundation about their literary rivalry and grudging respect. Pair with Magdalena Edwards’s Millions review of Lispector's The Complete Stories.
Now Is Not the Time for Realism
Recommended Listening: Margaret Atwood on her new novel – one of the most anticipated books of 2015, and the fall of realistic fiction. As she explains it, “when there's perceived instability that's happening you can't write [a so-called realistic] novel and have people believe it."
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Believing in the Bookternet
Recommended Viewing: Year in Reading alumna Rachel Fershleiser's TED talk "Why I heart the Bookternet" on building reading communities through the internet. "The more tools that we get for communication and collaboration, the more we're taking reading and writing — these really solitary pursuits — and building communities around them for connection and conversation."
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Kazuo Ishiguro To Publish First Novel in Ten Years
Next March, Kazuo Ishiguro will publish his first novel since Never Let Me Go. The new book, entitled The Buried Giant, is said to be about "lost memories, love, revenge and war.”
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Élisabeth Gille Part Two
In a recent article on Irène Némirovsky’s daughter Élisabeth Gille, Ruth Franklin picks up where our own Emily St. John Mandel left off.
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Drinking JJS While Reading JJS
One of the best parts of last month's Cullman Center discussion between John Jeremiah Sullivan and Wells Tower was watching JJS carry on the conversation while sipping from a highball glass of whiskey. The essayist's Southern roots and Irish ancestry of course make him no stranger to potent potables, which is why Danny Nowell's "John Jeremiah Sullivan" cocktail is so appropriate.
Computers Grading Papers?
The Hewlett Foundation is offering $100,000 to anyone who can create an "automated essay grader" (and in the process cost thousands of TAs their jobs).
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