“Most of the time I think of the self as a snare, and I don’t like being trapped in it. I try to reach out beyond my pittance of experience and connect to the world, but it turns out one way to do that is to be honest and accurate about my own life.” Leslie Jamison interviews Charles D’Ambrosio for The New Yorker. Pair with our own Hannah Gersen‘s review of D’Ambrosio’s Loitering.
“Instead of Sobbing, You Write Sentences”
An American Point of View
The international popularity and utility of English doesn’t show any signs of slowing, but what will the language look like after a few generations of increasing usage? The Economist gives a brief answer, but it doesn’t address the ways English is or will be used by different people to tell their stories. Damian Fowler addresses this when he asks, “[W]hat does it mean to have an American point of view,” or to call a book American in tone, as opposed to British or just English-language? In a blog post for The Paris Review, Fowler offers an answer: American novels are characterized by “a spare, sure sense of narrative, reflected in a colloquial voice, free of affectation.”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Dyer, Aira, Wilson, Iyer
Zona, Geoff Dyer’s book about Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, is out today. Also hitting shelves are César Aira’s Varamo, Adam Wilson’s Flatscreen, and Lars Iyer’s Dogma. We were looking forward to all four of these books to start the year.
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Two Bards
The second time Eudora Welty met William Faulkner, the latter brought the former out on a ride in his boat. She wrote a letter to Jean Stafford in 1949 that described the experience in entertaining detail. At The Paris Review Daily, you can read the letter in full. Pair with: James McWilliams on Faulkner’s novel The Reivers.
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What Is Grief?
“Is grief a condition of love? Does grief prevent us from making peace within ourselves and with each other?” For the Kenyon Review, Rosebud Ben-Oni writes on grief as waiting. Pair with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Millions essay on grief and art.
Consider the Tetrapod
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the “Albums of Our Lives” series over at The Rumpus. This week finds Ray Shea taking a look at The Mountain Goats’ The Sunset Tree.
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Ferlinghetti’s Journals Forthcoming
95-year-old Lawrence Ferlinghetti plans to publish his travel journals in September 2015, reports SFGate. The journals should cover his experience as a submarine chaser in World War II through his doctoral studies at the Sorbonne, as well as his travels through Central and South America later on.
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