“It has been said of the Beatles that there is not a clunker of a song in their oeuvre because they simply never let the bad stuff get released. The same might be said of Nabokov—for ‘Camera Obscura’ shows that he was indeed capable of writing a second-rate novel. (He knew it, and rewrote it.)” John Colapinto looks at Nabokov‘s retranslation of Laughter in the Dark for The New Yorker.
Nabokov’s Retranslation
The Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans
The Iowa Review will begin accepting submissions for the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans on April 15. The award honors creative writing by members of the U.S. military, and it’s open to both veterans as well as active duty personnel.
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Striking New Book Covers
The cover art for some highly anticipated forthcoming novels has been unveiled. Both C by Tom McCarthy and Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis are sporting eye-catching designs.
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Winesburg, Ohio Online
The University of Virginia Library (last mentioned for its William Faulkner recordings) has made the text of Sherwood Anderson‘s Winesburg, Ohio available online in its entirety.
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Lit Kids, Ctd.
Last Tuesday, I wrote about an article in the Literary Review that shed light on the daughters of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Now, in the LRB, Tim Parks reviews a new biography of the children of Charles Dickens. (Related: our own Mark O’Connell reviewed Mr. Parks’s new book.)
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A Gut-Wrenching Account and an Ethical Nightmare
A dissection of Jonathan Franzen’s recent New Yorker essay on David Foster Wallace finds Franzen’s wires showing.
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