Legend has it that Hemingway, after reading a review of his work that he didn’t like, strode into the reviewer’s office and slapped him across the face with a book. Upset over a line that questioned his bravado — the line compared his writing style to “wearing false hair on the chest” — Hemingway tore off his shirt to prove his chest hair was real. This week, The New Republic republished the article that started the fight. (For a lighter take on the author, you could read Stephanie Bernhard on cooking recipes in Hemingway’s fiction.)
Papismo
Chekhov’s Funeral
Did you know that on this very day in 1904, Chekhov was interred? If that comes as news to you, read about the last few months of his life at the always enlightening Today in Literature.
New McSweeney’s with Franzen, Meno, Oates, and Lepucki
Now available for order at McSweeney’s and Amazon, McSweeney’s Issue 37, featuring Jonathan Franzen, Joe Meno, Joyce Carol Oates, and most importantly, new fiction from The Millions’ very own Edan Lepucki!
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Kafka’s last living friend remembers
Alice Herz-Sommer, a 106-year-old Holocaust survivor and the last living person who knew Franz Kafka personally, reminisces about her friend in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “Kafka was a slightly strange man…”
Lost Irish Film Recovered
During the production of his classic film, Man of Aran, Robert Flaherty also directed an 11-minute short entitled Oidhche Sheanchais (“A Night of Storytelling”). It’s widely considered to be the first film recorded in the Irish language. For years, all extant copies were believed to be lost in a fire, but recently, researchers at Harvard’s Houghton Library rediscovered a nitrate print of the film.
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In the Middle
A lot is written about artists just starting their careers, and about those artists with a lifetime of work to look back over, but in a piece for The Enemy Barry Schwabasky considers the difficulty of being somewhere in the middle of an artistic career. After all, “most artists do, for better or worse, live through what’s come to be known as their midcareer. It’s just that they don’t often do so with ease. … The middle of the journey sometimes seems to be all about losing the way.”
The Transcriptionist’s Tale
“I usually let the thunderous conclusions of love scenes pass without comment, with the exception of one tussle so histrionic that to deny its participants a [JOINT CLIMAXES] seemed downright petty.” Our own Matt Seidel discusses his work as a freelancer for a captioning and transcription company at The Morning News.
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John Williams and John Williams
One John Williams is sitting atop the bestsellers list in The Netherlands following the multi-week (and quite unexpected) success of Stoner. Meanwhile a different John Williams is set to compose music in a galaxy far, far away.
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