“An appreciation of readers as diverse individuals with different tastes should be a basic tenet of criticism. Instead, it’s common for critics to imagine that their aesthetic preferences are the reflections of “readers” or a special class of readers—“serious readers,” “imaginative readers,” “brave readers,” or some other ill-defined category—whose views truly matter.” Lincoln Michel explains why “there’s no such thing as a fake reader” in an essay for Electric Literature.
No Fake Readers
Direct Feed
“Exorbitant cost aside, if I can have the complete works of Shakespeare electronically beamed into my brain in under ten minutes, can I really say I’ve experienced Shakespeare? There is something organic about the experience of moving your eyeballs from left to right over an LCD screen in order to take in a sequence of marks the brain then must interpret as words, all the while using your hands to grip a lightweight, durable device.” Arguing for e-books over beaming text into your brain.
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More Praise for Alina Bronsky
Following up on our look at the German literary landscape, Three Percent publishes a glowing review of Alina Bronsky's Broken Glass Park.
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Something Out of Something
BOMB Magazine is collaborating with Farrar, Straus & Giroux to commence their "Something Out of Something" design contest. Participating designers, writers, and artists are invited to "draw inspiration from the written work of Israeli short story writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret to create visual art of their own." Winners will receive $500, a personalized copy of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, and their artwork's appearance in a Keret story or film. You can read the full details on the contest's Tumblr and Facebook pages.
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New Lorrie Moore on the Way
Publicity bigwig Paul Bogaards spilled the beans on Twitter Thursday night: Lorrie Moore has a new short fiction collection in the pipeline. It’s slated for March 2014 release.
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All Things Interwoven
"Imagination for me has always been about the spaces in between, a sort of filler that completes a picture. If what we know is the jaggedness of the ocean floor, then imagination is the body of water that defines what is hidden and what is seen." This essay on interstices and representing Hawai'i Creole English as a legitimate literary participant is excellent.
Watching A Wrinkle in Time
The movie adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time premiered this week. Before or after you see the movie (there are some spoilers if you haven't seen it or read the book) read this essay by Alanna Bennett on the simple, but revolutionary power of the story and Ava DuVernay's book-to-screen vision.
Melville House withdraws from Amazon’s Best Translated Book Awards
Citing Amazon's "predatory and thuggish practices," Melville House has withdrawn from future participation in the Best Translated Book Awards.
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