You may have read our review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel The Buried Giant. You may also have read our own Mark O’Connell’s review at Slate. For another opinion, you could read James Wood, who writes about Ishiguro’s “prose of provoking equilibrium” in the latest New Yorker.
Take Three
Guernica Interviews Gore Vidal
Guernica has a previously unpublished interview with Gore Vidal, who died recently at the age of 86.
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Erdrich’s Love Medicine
In the latest from The Atlantic’s By Heart series, ex-Granta editor John Freeman discusses Louise Erdrich’s interpretation of Faulkner in Love Medicine. Pair with an essay on the pacing of Faulkner’s prose.
Bring it Back! Literature In the Olympics by 2016!
Fun Fact: “Literature” was an Olympic event until 1948. In fact, several other events were also listed under the umbrella of “Sporting Art,” as Olympic historian John MacAloon points out to NPR. For example, W. B. Yeats’ brother, Jack Butler Yeats, won the “Mixed Painting” silver in 1924; some people even won “Medals for Making Medals!”
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Poetry and Joy
“I really do hate the idea that black joy itself is a joy derived in spite of. While it may indeed include that, limiting it to such assumes that joy among black people only exists as a defiant response to oppression from white people. I’d rather believe that black folk are capable of this deep supernatural sense without having to be enslaved or disenfranchised.” For the Boston Review, Jericho Brown on poetry and joy.
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Sweet Mercy
A writer who calls himself the “Cal Ripken of turkey pardoning” reflects on the Presidential tradition. (If your curiosity extends to its history, you might like this rundown at Mental Floss.)