Tolkien‘s The Lord of the Rings: “a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class”? Michael Moorcock thinks so.
The Anti-Tolkien
Mass(ive) Effect
What effect, if any, are video games having on literature? Tobias Carroll at Hazlitt explores the surprising liminal space between video game narratives and literary fiction. This essay from The Millions is a nice complement.
●
●
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The word “whom” appears “just 53 times out of every million [spoken] words,” according to the Corpus of Contemporary American English. This does not bode well for members of future generations – some of whom may be fond of formality.
Needs More Pigs
The archives of the British Library have been digitized, and among many other gems is this rejection of George Orwell’s Animal Farm by none other than T.S. Eliot, himself: “And after all, your pigs are far more intelligent than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm – in fact, there couldn’t have been an Animal Farm at all without them: so that what was needed (someone might argue), was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs.”
YiR Alums In Spook
Are you familiar with Spook magazine founded and edited by Jason Parham? It focuses on promoting artists of color and their work. This month the fiction issue, was released and it features work from beloved writers (and Year in Reading alums!) Junot Diaz, Angela Flournoy, and Vinson Cunningham. Along with YiR favorite Justin Torres. You can buy it here! Perfect read for the snowy weekend.
Not Evil
Recommended reading: Sara Polsky writes for the New Yorker about “The Detective Novel That Convinced a Generation Richard III Wasn’t Evil.”
Everyone’s a Critic
“A continuation of a book that has proved very popular seldom is successful, and we cannot say that we think Alice’s adventures by any means equal to her previous ones.” The Guardian digs up its original review of Lewis Carroll‘s Through the Looking Glass.
●
●