“It’s the marriage of one kind of darkness to another… the black storm cloud of Neel’s pen is well suited to Dostoyevsky’s questions of God, reason, and doubt.” On Alice Neel‘s illustrations for The Brothers Karamazov, from The Paris Review. Pair with our own Kevin Hartnett’s much lighter take on the novel, “Reading The Brothers Karamazov: Even a Toddler Knows a Funny Name When He Hears One.”
One Darkness to Another
Franzen on HBO’s The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen dishes about the forthcoming HBO adaptation of The Corrections.
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NY Approves the Rushdie Rip
Zoë Heller’s takedown of Salman Rushdie in the NYRB may yet ruffle some feathers, but for now it’s nabbed the top spot on New York Magazine’s approval matrix.
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Anything for Money
On Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading Tumblr, check out National Book Award finalist Karen E. Bender’s short story “Anything for Money.”
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Become Louder, Even Still
Recommended Reading: Apogee Journal has collected fourteen responses from writers to sexual violence perpetrated in the literary community.
A Matter of Time
Does literature have to be timeless? Over at Electric Literature, Kevin Pickard debates pop culture references in novels. Pair with Bill Morris’s Millions essay on books about the near future.
“How can you buy or sell the sky . . . ?”
Recommended Reading (and Viewing): “Skymall” by Tom Healy.
“In matters like writing[…], a man does what he has to do—if he has to write, why then, he writes”
Rebecca Davis O’Brien unearths a letter in which Malcolm Cowley tackles the timeless question, “Should I get an MFA?” Just as poignant as Cowley’s letter is novelist Helen DeWitt’s pointed dismissal of Cowley’s advice in the comments section.