There’s a new biography of T.S. Eliot out, and this one concentrates on the poet’s American childhood and his transition from a youthful Tom to the now-famous T.S. (just in case you needed some context for that new writer’s retreat.)
Young Eliot
Ride or Die
"When I was younger, I finished everything. I was a total martyr. Now ... I’m getting older. We have a finite amount of time on this earth. If something really doesn’t speak to you, and there’s not a ride-or-die reason to read it all the way through, then it’s time to give up." Ten questions for Lisa Lucas, the new(ish) director of the National Book Foundation.
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Very Lovely and Intense
“I hadn’t gone back in time, but in a sense Rome had come forward, by insidious and sly degrees, under new names, hidden by the flak talk and phony obscurations, at last into our world again." Whatever you say, Philip. Was Philip K. Dick a mystic or was he just a madman?
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Unofficial
For Perry Link, it was embarrassing to read Eileen Chang for the first time, because her work revealed things about China it took him too long to learn on his own. In The New York Review of Books, he writes about how Naked Earth, which the magazine's publishing arm is republishing in June, cut through the jargon of Chairman Mao’s regime. FYI, Jamie Fisher wrote an essay on the book for The Millions.
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Shattering the Short Story
Recommended Reading: Bailey Lewis's short story at Paper Darts "When the South Wind Blows Glass Shatters and Disappears Like Rain." "A young girl’s body hurtles through a stationery store window at top speed."
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Go to Sleep
If you’re the kind of person who might fall asleep while reading a page-turner, you’re not alone. For Read It Forward, Jonathan Russell Clark writes about the challenge of literary sleepiness. For more of his writing, check out his essay on the art of the final sentence for The Millions.
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Books on the Radio
In case you missed it the first time, Tulsa's KWGS the week re-aired an interview with my co-editor Jeff Martin on our book that came out earlier this year, The Late American Novel.
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