In her controversial book The Fall of Language in the Age of English, Minae Mizumura argues that English, thanks largely to its global predominance, threatens to lessen the diversity of expression in the world. At Bookslut, she tells interviewer Corinna Pichl about her book, her issues with lingua francas and things you can say in Japanese that you can’t say in English.
Je Ne Sais Quoi
Vanishing on the Stage
Over at Entropy, Laura A. Warman writes about queer poetics and the politics of the body in poetry performances. As she puts it, “Can we be a body that is constantly obscured?” Pair with this Millions essay on poetry performances.
The Art of Encouragement
The Moralist With the Dragon Tattoo
Tim Parks takes Stieg Larsson seriously – sort of – in the NYRB.
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Appearing Elsewhere
I wrote an essay for The Dublin Review on the strange phenomenon of Internet unboxing videos, in which people remove new purchases from their packaging and talk us through the process in exhaustive detail. You can read the whole thing online here.
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The Scream
Edvard Munch’s The Scream recently garnered a record breaking $119.9 million at Sotheby’s in New York. Despite the “tasty narrative potential” of the iconic artwork, the Pulitizer Prize winning art critic Holland Cotter thinks that the painting’s new owner spent their vast sum of money unwisely.
Kafka’s Century
Kafka‘s The Metamorphosis has officially hit the century mark, and over at The Guardian Richard T. Kelly celebrates with “100 thoughts for 100 years.” Pair with our own Matt Seidel‘s thoughts on rereading Kafka’s masterpiece, which you can find here.
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Darcy the Ripper
As part of the Funny Women feature at The Rumpus, Melissa Darcey wonders: what would it be like if Lifetime made movies out of classic novels?
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Rebecca Hunt’s Mr. Chartwell
At The Washington Times, my review of Rebecca Hunt‘s Mr. Chartwell, a shaggy dog novel about Winston Churchill‘s “black dog” (depression).
The author of “The Fall of Language in the Age of English” and several highly regarded novels is Minae Mizumura, not “Minae Minimazura” (!). Evidently, the global predominance of English also interferes with the ability to assimilate and double-check the spelling of non-English names.
Hi Anna,
Thanks for pointing that out. We’ve fixed the name.
Best,
Thomas