Ralph Waldo Emerson called him “the jingle-man.” Henry James called his work “decidedly primitive.” Yet Edgar Allan Poe, nearly two centuries after his death, is now acclaimed as a writer on par with his best contemporaries. How did his reputation evolve? In the Times Literary Supplement, Marjorie Perloff reviews a new study of Poe by Jerome McGann.
The Craven
Interview with Günter Grass
The Jackal Speaks
Superagent Andrew ("The Jackal") Wylie disses the e-book and modern publishing's "wild weekend in Las Vegas approach" to book acquisition in the Wall Street Journal Magazine. But the best part is an online slide show depicting Wylie's journey from a wild-eyed hippie cabbie in 1971 to the uberwasp wheeler-dealer that he is today.
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Translating the Untranslatable
Recommended Reading: In which a great translator takes on a nearly impossible project: "Schmidt violates the rules of orthography and punctuation throughout the book, and its sprawling conversations cover James Joyce, trees, magic, the moon, and Xerxes, among many other things. After getting Zettel’s Traum out of his system, Schmidt would go on to write his best works. 'I had to write it,' he said. 'And such a book had to be written sometime.'"
Movies R Fun
Check out the online slideshow of Movies R Fun, a collection of drawings done for the 2010 “Lil’ Inappropriate Golden Books” series by Pixar story artist Josh Cooley. He even sells prints on his website.
The Magnificent
"In a concession to our unsubtle political age, the cliff is doing a good impression of Abraham Lincoln in profile with a vicious orange fulmination exploding from his head." Looks like Wells Tower had an interesting time in Hawaii.
Tuesday New Release Day: Dunham; Mantel; Biss; Stein; Cronenberg; Zupan; Amis
Girls creator Lena Dunham’s first book is on shelves, as is the new short story collection by Man Booker laureate and recent Millions interviewee Hilary Mantel. Also out: On Immunity by Eula Biss; A Sudden Light by Garth Stein; Consumed by the filmmaker David Cronenberg; The Ploughmen by Kim Zupan; and The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis. For more on these and other titles, check out our Great 2014 Book Preview.
Goodnight, Stein
“My students are not as puzzled by Gertrude Stein as I expect them to be. Stein writes: ‘Glazed Glitter. Nickel, what is nickel,’ and my students recognize the moment of wondering. This habit of wonder is familiar in part because we have been raised on the lists of Goodnight Moon.” On Gertrude Stein, Goodnight Moon, and the wonderment of language from Slate.