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
A Fanfiction Guide
Fanfiction has been gaining mainstream popularity and cultural heft - just take our own Elizabeth Minkel's Year in Reading post as evidence. For those of us with less experience in the fic community, Vulture has assembled a comprehensive "Guide to the Fanfiction Explosion," complete with infographics on Harry Styles fic, an explanation of why Annie Proulx isn't thrilled about Brokeback Mountain spinoffs, and, of course, a syllabus for further reading.
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Interviewing Meghan Daum
Guernica interviews Meghan Daum about The Little House on the Prairie, finding a home in Los Angeles and the necessity of restructuring the conversation about children. Pair with our own Hannah Gersen's review of her essay collection The Unspeakable and Edan Lepucki's take on Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids.
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Genç On Teoman
Kaya Genç, who’s previously written for us about Orhan Pamuk, has a new article out in Guernica about deceased filmmaker Seyfi Teoman, “whose two feature films,” he writes, “drove Turkish film for two decades.”
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Meet Carey Mulligan
An Education opens this weekend in theaters. Newcomer Carey Mulligan stars and her performance has generated a lot of buzz at Sundance and Cannes. Also starring Alfred Molina, Olivia Williams, Emma Thompson, and Peter Sarsgaard.
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An Experimental Review of an Experimental Translation
Matthew Jakubowski’s “experimental review” of Yoko Tawada’s Portrait of a Tongue is unlike anything you’ve read in months, and I promise you that.
Yossarian Wins
At The Paris Review Daily, Katherine Hill (whose debut novel came out two weeks ago) comes up with a bracket of ideal literary friends. (Understandably, Portnoy beat out Humbert Humbert.)