Fifty years after T.S. Eliot’s death, the poet’s estate has finally agreed to authorize a biography, which explains the publication of Young Eliot, a new book on his early years. Among other things, the book reveals details about Eliot’s first marriage, in which his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood gave him the nickname “dearest Wonkypenky.”
Waste of the Young
But where’s the magic?
So JK Rowling‘s first book for adults is scheduled for release in September. The Casual Vacancy will be a “blackly comic” novel about an idyllic English parish’s… civic politics?
Lone Struggle
“Many of the most powerful characters in our best-loved stories are orphaned, adopted, fostered, or found. At the same time, many of the most powerless citizens in our society are orphaned, adopted, or fostered children, and the marginalized adults that so many become. Why have so few of us even noticed this centuries-old disparity?” On literature’s most celebrated protagonists, from Oliver Twist to Anne of Green Gables.
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Unfinished Work
At the Fiction Writers Review, Robin Black sits down with contributor and Year in Reading alumna Nichole Bernier. The two discuss, among other things, Bernier’s new novel, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D., as well as novels in which lengthy sections feature characters reading journal entries. (Bernier calls them “funhouse mirrors.”)
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Accessing Your Inner Childhood Spy with Qian Julie Wang
Qian Julie Wang discusses her memoir, Beautiful Country, a story of immigration and discovery seen through the eyes of an undocumented child.
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George and Robin
Our own Elizabeth Minkel has been posting sights and quotations from a recent George R. R. Martin and Robin Hobb event in London. You can check out her coverage over on Tumblr.
They’re Not Rocks
“I have this belief that you have to save at least half of your crucial experiences. The ones that are crystalline. The ones that you always can recall. And you recall that every detail—what actors call a sense impression. You remember how things smelled, what they felt like, how you felt at the moment. You remember every single last part of this episode, or moment in your life.” This interview with Norman Mailer from The Paris Review never actually made it to print, which makes it all the more fascinating.
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Book Trailer Contest
Would you like to win all 37 novellas from Melville House’s “The Art of the Novella” series? Then try your hand at making a video book trailer for their “The Duel x 5” set.
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