Last week, I pointed readers to a recording of Benedict Cumberbatch on BBC Radio, reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Over at Slate, Rebecca Schuman explains why Cumberbatch is the story’s ideal reader, unpacking his “withering, perfectly enunciated deadpan.”
A Proper Sociopath
I Leave You My Daffodils
What was it like to grow up with Wordsworth or Coleridge as your dad? Hint: it was weird. (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)
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Weekend Reading: David Foster Wallace Edition
Looking for something to read this weekend? Perhaps you should work your way through The Electric Typewriter’s round-up of 19 essays by David Foster Wallace.
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Robert McCrum on books
Would you rather have a long literary career, or write a brilliant, successful one-off? Robert McCrum considers the literary career arc.
The Fleshy School
It looks like it’s a poetry kind of morning. Spring is on its way, and what better way to celebrate than with Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “The Sun’s Shame,” a poem of death and desire … and also sunshine: “All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!”
RIP Biggie
To celebrate her father’s memory, T’yanna Wallace, daughter of Christopher Wallace (better-known as Notorious B.I.G.) dropped by Hot 97 with her mother to discuss “her father, working, and relationships with Faith Evans and Lil Kim.”