Harold Bloom turns eighty-five this year, which makes it all the more impressive that his forty-fifth book, The Daemon Knows, comes out this week. At Vulture, Amy Bloom (no relation) has tea and scones with the Yale professor, who talks about Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and why a critic called his new book “an invectorium.” You could also read Matt Hanson on his last volume of criticism.
More Anxiety
Tuesday New Release Day: Desai, James, Gordon-Levitt, Beach, Mueller
New this week are Anita Desai’s The Artist of Disappearance and P.D. James’ Pride and Prejudice sequel Death Comes to Pemberly. Joseph Gordon-Levitt hangs up his acting duds to put out The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1, and, speaking of tiny stories, there’s Lou Beach’s 420 Characters: “these crystalline miniature stories began as Facebook status updates.” On the nonfiction side, there’s Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller.
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Reading with Augmented Reality
Thanks to advances being made with augmented reality, readers can soon access a much more enhanced experience.
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Becoming David Grann
The brilliant New Yorker reporter David Grann discusses his new collection, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes.
Into the Abyss
“The day is spent for the most part in a glorious solitude. Like the hunter who moves silently through the woods to check his traps, she moves through the library, cautiously avoiding those whom she knows. A single conversation would ruin the beauty and vastness of her silence. Today no such conversation occurs and she is happy.” Good luck not reading this narration of a graduate student’s life in the voice of director Werner Herzog, now. Here’s a great Herzog Millions piece, as well.
The Bard is Back
Shakespeare’s First Folio will leave its heavily guarded vault to tour the U.S. in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death. You could also read our essay on the holiness of Shakespeare.
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.