In Meg Wolitzer’s new YA novel Belzhar, a group of teenagers packed off to an idyllic boarding school learn that they have the ability to undo their most serious traumas. Their discovery is sparked by a writing assignment in a class on Sylvia Plath. At Slate, Jennifer Ray Morell connects Wolitzer’s novel to Plath’s classic The Bell Jar. Related: our own Hannah Gersen’s interview with biographer Elizabeth Winder.
Teen Angst
Have Tos and Not Have Tos
Recommended Reading: Scott Timberg on Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman.
Guinea Pig, Actual Pig
Recommended Reading: Maria Russo’s Times review of the new Dr. Seuss book. (If you haven’t yet, go check out Michiko Kakutani’s companion review-in-verse.
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The End of Wall Street
In New York, Gabriel Sherman checks in on Wall Street and finds that the big money culture may be gone for good. “There has been a growing recognition on Wall Street that the system that had provided those million-dollar bonuses was built on a highly unstable foundation.”
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Just Another Mason
In general, we think of translators as people whose job, briefly summarized, is to create elegant texts out of works in foreign languages. But J.R.R. Tolkien, in his translation of Beowulf, set out to do something different. The Lord of the Rings author published a translation that he kept intentionally clunky. Why? In his telling, he did it to better imitate Old English.
Celebrating America’s Birthday
It was America’s birthday this week. Celebrate with quintessential American fiction, according to the rest of the world (via LitHub). More of a poetry person? We search for the great American epic.
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Beautiful Banned Books
This is cool: in celebration of last week’s Banned Books Week, Chapel Hill Public Library held a competition for local artists to create new work based on books that have been banned or challenged. Trading cards were printed from the winning selections, which you can see along with a gallery of all the entries.
Keija Pernissen Interview
The Missouri Review‘s Michael Nye sits down for an interview with The Ruins of Us author Keija Parnissen. The book, he says, is his “first must read book of the year.”
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