“In addition to fearing, as a young person, that I lacked sophistication, I also feared that I lacked courage. It was hard for me to say something even mildly tough about someone else or their work; hard for me, generally, to be critical. Mary McCarthy had no such trouble.” Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings, writes about her literary idol for the LA Times.
McCarthy, Literary Idol
Style-Elements
A question that plagues American writers: how would the lit world be different if everybody followed the rules in The Elements of Style? The answer: it would look like this.
Lone Struggle
“Many of the most powerful characters in our best-loved stories are orphaned, adopted, fostered, or found. At the same time, many of the most powerless citizens in our society are orphaned, adopted, or fostered children, and the marginalized adults that so many become. Why have so few of us even noticed this centuries-old disparity?” On literature’s most celebrated protagonists, from Oliver Twist to Anne of Green Gables.
Obama on ‘Redeployment’
Recommended recommendations: President Obama recommends Year in Reading alum and National Book Award Winner Phil Klay‘s Redeployment.
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Ramsquaddled and Pixellated
Are you familiar with the term, “clatterdevengeance”? It’s the favorite word of Jonathon Green, purveyor of the internet’s newest dirty slang dictionary, which seeks to document some of the more hilarious (and uncouth) experiments in the English language.
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The Via Crucis of the Book
“All of a sudden, things that should be banal, like a person’s face—the fact that a person has a face—becomes extremely disorienting. In these moments, I think it’s important to keep those strange commas.” In an illuminating interview for Asymptote, Year in Reading alumna Katrina Dodson talks about the thrills and challenges in translating The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector. Pair with Magdalena Edwards’s Millions review of the collection.
Donohgue and Cunningham at Symphony Space
In New York? Visit Symphony Space tonight (12/6) at 7:30 PM to see Emma Donoghue in conversation with author Michael Cunningham. Donoghue’s Year in Reading entry appeared here today.
An Autocrat’s Guide to World Cup Qualification
Recommended reading: What do you get the guy you can’t get anything else–the one with his own oil-rich country–like the Emir of Qatar? The LA Review recommends starting with the World Cup.
For the Grammarians
Who or whom? Which or that? Jon Gingerich has helpfully assembled a list of “20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes.”
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