In 1913, four years before the Russian Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II made the now-baffling claim that a writer named Teffi was the only major Russian writer. At the time, however, his endorsement made sense, because everybody in Russia, from royalty on down, read Teffi’s work and “delighted” in it. Until the revolution, at which point she was consigned to oblivion. William Grimes writes about a new collection of her stories.
Stars of Old Russia
Characters on Fire with Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros discusses her forthcoming poetry collection, Woman Without Shame, and why she writes about characters and stories with an urgent quality.
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Abramson Taking Over at the Times
Big media news today: “Jill Abramson, a former investigative reporter and Washington bureau chief for The New York Times, will become the paper’s executive editor, succeeding Bill Keller, who is stepping down to become a full-time writer for the paper.”
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The Longest Hike
“At the train station in Cerbère, France, M. and I have survived the grueling hike on the Sentier de la Liberté Walter Benjamin.” For Catapult, Gwen Strauss writes about climbing the path that Benjamin used to flee the Gestapo, only to take his own life at its terminus. See also: Kyle Chayka‘s recommendation of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in our own pages just last week.
The Desk on the Floss
Stop, thief! It appears that George Eliot’s writing desk has been stolen from the Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery in England.
Lit Pics
Scared of being lonely this Valentine’s Day? If you pre-order Sam Pink’s new novel, Rontel, the author will cheer you up with a personalized sexy text message. (It’s also worth mentioning that Electric Lit is publishing the novel as their first e-book.)
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See Spot Run
Is there any animal more noble than your beloved childhood pet? In this moving essay from 3:AM Magazine, Adrian Nathan West explains a couple of lessons that he learned about love and devotion from his Labrador named Jake.
Purgatorio
After more than sixty years, Antonio di Benedetto has had his book Zama finally translated into English. The novel, which kicks off in the 1790s, depicts a Spanish administrator named Don Diego de Zama, whose viceroy dispatches him to a town in the scrublands of Paraguay. In the latest New Yorker, Benjamin Kunkel gives his take.
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