By the age of twenty-one, Eugene O’Neill had dropped out of Princeton, fathered a child and caught syphilis on a trip through South America. He was, in his own words, “the Irish luck kid,” blessed in a strange way with misfortune. Yet he went on to win a Pulitzer eleven years later. How did he do it? In the LRB, John Lahr reads a new biography of the playwright.
The Bad Luck Club
The Great American Sneaker
For every book lover who also values comfortable footwear, New Balance has announced a line of sneakers inspired by great American literature.
Joy & Wonder & Goshawks
“Joy and wonder. That’s at the heart of what I love about the natural world. If you’re receptive to it, it does something to human minds that nothing else can do.” Electric Literature talks with Helen MacDonald about living with, and like, a goshawk. Pair with Madeleine Larue‘s Millions review of MacDonald’s H is for Hawk.
●
●
The World’s Most Powerful Editor
“I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly.” Norway’s largest newspaper, Aftenposten, has published a front-page letter to Mark Zuckerberg after Facebook censored an iconic image from the Vietnam war. The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a naked nine-year-old Kim Phúc running away from a napalm attack was deleted from a post about seven images “that changed the history of warfare.”
Tatjana Soli, author of The Lotus Eaters, wrote for us about the legacy of that infamous photo a few years back.
The Beat Drops And Rises Again
Scott Plagenhoef tracks electronica’s Phoenix-like trajectory from its overhyped beginning in the 90’s through its contemporary influence on folks like Skrillex.
●
●
Wharton is the Original Gossip Girl
On this week’s New Yorker Out Loud podcast, Rebecca Mead recommends (seriously) Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth — “the real thing” — for teen-readers who love the Cecily von Ziegesar Gossip Girl series.
Gary Shteyngart’s Book Trailer
This “book trailer” released by Gary Shteyngart for his upcoming book Super Sad True Love Story has been the cause of much recent hilarity. If you have yet to see it, look for appearances by Jeffrey Eugenides, Jay McInerney and actor James Franco.
●
●
“Media hype and unusual advertisements”
The Los Angeles Review of Books interviewed Xujun Eberlein, a “China-born and now Boston-based” short story writer, essayist and blogger about recent literary happenings in her native country. The first question they asked has to do with Finnegans Wake, which is selling surprisingly well in Chinese bookstores.
●
●
Veering Bogward
At The Rumpus, Shawn Andrew Mitchell reviews Dark Lies the Island, the new short story collection by the Irish writer Kevin Barry. Mitchell quotes a number of the book’s more interesting idioms and perceives “an impolitic decadence to how Barry couples his words.” (Related: we interviewed Barry a few weeks ago.)
●
●