Sanitize and Simplify
The History of the Blurb
What if Petrarch had blurbed The Divine Comedy, or Shakespeare, "author of Tony Award-winning sensation Hamlet," had reviewed Don Quixote? Tom Rachman imagines these blurbs and more for The Rumpus, and his piece pairs well with our brief history of the blurb.
Controversial Books
This week in book-related infographics: a look at the most controversial books of all time.
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Iowa’s Free Online Poetry Workshop
A new MOOC from the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program is scheduled to begin on June 28. “How Writers Write Poetry” is free and open to the public, and it will feature craft talks from poets such as Robert Hass and Kwame Dawes. A fiction-writing course is also scheduled for September. (Related: Read how several Iowa MFA students describe a typical day in the program.)
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“What is your useful skill in a tangible situation?”
First there were cupcakes, then donuts, and now toast. At The Pacific Standard, John Gravois discovers the surprisingly emotional and personal reason for why toast is the latest artisan food trend.
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Inquiry and Imagination
At The Nervous Breakdown, Micah McRary talks with Leslie Jamison about her use of POV, her new book of essays and whether her criticism might be dubbed “evasive biography.” You could also read our interview with Jamison or else read Ryan Teitman’s review of The Empathy Exams.
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The Silent History
The Silent History is being billed as a “new kind of novel.” Readers download a free app for their iOS devices and, over a period of six months, the app will deliver brief, serialized installments of an “exploratory novel.” Certain features of the story depend on your geographic location, and readers also have the opportunity to contribute their own features. For a full primer, as well as interview with Eli Horowitz, one of the “key figures” behind the idea, head over to VQR’s website.
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Letters to Gandhi
Maria Popova shares Tolstoy’s forgotten letters to Gandhi, later published as A Letter to Hindu. “Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills.”
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A Hunger Artist
On August 1st, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia. Also, Franz Kafka went swimming. Moreover, the Metamorphosis author mentioned both events in his diary, writing simply and strangely that "Germany has declared war on Russia — went swimming in the afternoon." Was this odd phrasing intentional or a sign of the author's self-absorption? In an article for Open Letters Monthly, Robert Minto reads all three volumes of Reiner Stach's new biography.
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