Self-Portraits and Sherry
“Qualities other than introspection”
To the Arthouse
Back in 2008, Patti Smith kicked off an exhibition with a reading of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. It may not surprise you to learn that the punk legend, after getting through one sentence, broke into “free improvisation.”
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Tragicomic
Recommended Reading: Helen Vendler on John Berryman. You could also read Stephen Akey on Berryman’s collection The Dream Songs.
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To Burn, or Not To Burn
The Russian Ministry of Culture has come under fire recently after accusations were levied by the Russian Writers’ Union of some 500 books having been removed from libraries by authorities in the Komi republic–and another fifty allegedly incinerated in the process. Most of these were textbooks published with money from the Soros Fund, run by hedge fund billionaire and very vocal Putin critic George Soros. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Culture has denied the accusations, stating that “if any books are declared ‘extremist’ through a court proceeding, they are put into the special list of the ministry of justice and immediately withdrawn from libraries. However, even in this case books are not destroyed, they are just not lent out to readers.”
Cover to Cover
Here at The Millions, we know the importance of a book’s cover (for evidence see here, here, here and here), so Margaret Sullivan‘s new project, Jane Austen Cover to Cover, has our attention. A sample of covers for Emma, available on The Paris Review‘s blog, “provides a fascinating glimpse into a variety of publishing cultures, and it reminds that even our classics are mutable, pitched to appeal to any number of sensibilities, their literary status in constant flux per the dictates of the market.”