Recommended reading: The New Yorker‘s Amelia Lester reviews Richard Flanagan‘s “love story set amid horrific historic events,” The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which just won the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
The New Yorker on Flanagan
“Stare at us stoned like eyes determined”
Rage Against the Machine frontman Zach De La Rocha has penned a poem dedicated to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
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The Novel vs. The Net
Sven Birkerts, still working through arguments begun in The Gutenberg Elegies, suggests in The American Scholar that “the novel and the Internet are opposites.” (via)
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Product Placement in 19th Century British Novels
A recent survey of 19th century British literature uncovered advertising subtly placed within classic texts by authors like Dickens, Austen, and Thackeray. From Vanity Fair, for example: “‘My sisters say she has diamonds as big as pigeons’ eggs,’ George said, laughing. ‘How they must set off her complexion! Surely she avails herself of Madame A.T. Rowley’s Toilet Mask (or Face Gloves)…’” (via Book Bench)
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Read Yourself Civilized
In the latest issue of The Boston Review, Elaine Scarry reviews Steven Pinker’s
The Better Angels of Our Nature. Pinker argues that literature, by bolstering man’s empathy, has lead to huge reductions in worldwide violence, a thesis that sounds dangerously close to the absurd pop-science of Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal.
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In the Future, We Are All Authors
Seed forecasts an age of universal authorship (though its definitions of “consumer” and “creator” beg for reconsideration). (via)
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