Recommended reading: this brilliant and thorough profile of Toni Morrison from the New York Times Magazine, complete with a video of Morrison reading from her upcoming novel, God Help the Child.
A Radical Vision
Queens’ Libraries Speak the Mother Tongue
In many of Queens’ 62 library branches, copies of books are being borrowed are in Korean, Chinese or Spanish. A library branch in Astoria, responding to its own diverse readership, carries children’s books in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese and Gujarati. Striving to cater to the intensifying globalization of its surrounding streets, the New York neighborhood library speaks your language as never before.
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A Rear Window Darkly
It’s been a good year for Alfred Hitchcock, what with Vertigo beating out Citizen Kane in the once-a-decade Greatest Movie of All Time poll conducted by Sight and Sound. At Full-Stop, Rachel Baron Singer takes a look at Hitchcock and The Girl, both of which examine “the dark side” of Hitchcock’s genius.
On Marathon Readings
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, David Shapiro remarks on the current popularity of the marathon reading, or “a format of communal public performance that has more in common with the filibuster than the conventional literary reading.” Previously, Jeff Price wrote a piece on our site concerning the particular camaraderie that arises among participants and audience members during marathon readings. (As a bonus: I share a David Foster Wallace anecdote in the comments for that piece.)
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“Author Loses Leg in Lagoon”
Writing the London Review of Books‘ “Diary” this week, South African scholar and political activist R.W. Johnson: “Author Loses Leg in Lagoon.”
The Literature of Loss
“Loss isn’t science; it’s a human reckoning.” The New York Times posts an e-mail conversation between Joyce Carol Oates and Meghan O’Rourke on why we write about grief, following the release of Oates’ memoir A Widow’s Story and in anticipation of O’Rourke’s own memoir of loss, The Long Goodbye.
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