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
Colson Whitehead on Making Eccentric Ideas Plausible
Colson Whitehead reflects on the fantastic fiction he consumed as a child and how it made the most eccentric ideas seem plausible.
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Near Deaths in Literature
Last week, JK Rowling announced that, midway through writing the Harry Potter series, she nearly killed off Ron Weasley “out of spite.” Ron isn’t the first supporting character to narrowly avoid death in an author’s rough draft. The Awl illustrates some of literature’s other close calls with death.
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Cormac McCopyEditor
Cormac McCarthy helped copy edit Lawrence M. Krauss’s Quantum Man, a biography of the physicist Richard Feynman. But, seriously, can anyone prove it wasn’t really McCarthy’s Yelp review doppelgänger?
Sarah M. Broom on Unfinished Work
"The unfinished work is no less real, or necessary, or powerful than the book," Broom says in a recent Whiting Foundation speech.
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An Infinity in Reading
“Calling yourself depressed when you’re a writer seems so redundant.” On a year in reading Infinite Jest with Anna Fitzpatrick at Hazlitt. Be sure to check out the new fan-designed cover for the twentieth anniversary edition of the book.
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Looking Over the Shoulders of Giants
Ever want to watch someone write a novel? Nows your chance. Sorta. Silvia Hartmann, UK author of thriller novels, is inviting readers to observe as she types up her next novel in a Google doc.
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Down On Cannery Row
“I will tell them one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest story of all — the story of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of love and hate, of beauty and ugliness. I shall try to demonstrate to them how these doubles are inseparable — how neither can exist without the other and how out of their groupings creativeness is born.” John Steinbeck, American literary titan and author of The Grapes of Wrath, certainly knew a thing or two about creativity.
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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