“Russian humor is to ordinary humor what backwoods fundamentalist poisonous snake handling is to a petting zoo. Russian humor is slapstick, only you actually die.” Ian Frazier writes about the strange humor of Daniil Kharms for the New York Review of Books.
Russian Slapstick
Adaptation Progress Report
This week in book-to-film adaptations: Meredith Goldstein rounds up some possible and upcoming projects for The Boston Globe, including adaptations of The Goldfinch (which we cast here) and our own Emily St. John Mandel‘s Station Eleven.
Scaring Men
Here are a couple Halloween-related essays from the good people at The Literary Hub: This fascinating literary history of witches by Jess Bergman, and this piece by Tobias Carroll on non-fiction writers crossing the supernatural line between fantasy and reality.
First Draft of Infinite Jest
“Behind every great work, there is an ink-stained piece of notebook paper.” Here is the first page of a handwritten draft of Infinite Jest.
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So many wobbly assumptions
Laura Miller pokes some holes in that Dartmouth study about how little classic literature appears to be influencing contemporary writers.
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Building the Labyrinth
“When gender’s not there, it sort of leaves room for us to focus on these other differences—and most of them end up being insignificant, too.” An interview with Emma Ramadan, translator of Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, on writing, translating, and understanding genderless characters.
5 Under 35 Named
The National Book Foundation announced this year’s “5 Under 35” authors. Three cheers for Jennifer duBois (A Partial History of Lost Causes), Stuart Nadler (The Book of Life), Haley Tanner (Vaclav & Lena), Justin Torres (We the Animals), and Claire Vaye Watkins (Battleborn, which we recently reviewed)!
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