Think Knausgaard is the only Norwegian writer worth knowing? Think again. Lit Hub has a roundup of “Five Great Norwegian Writers Not Named Knausgaard.”
Not Named Knausgaard
Tuesday New Release Day: Bennett; Dermansky; Jarrar; Witt; Weiner; Oliver; Atwood
Out this week: The Mothers by Brit Bennett; The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky; Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar; Future Sex by Emily Witt; Hungry Heart by Jennifer Weiner; Upstream by Mary Oliver; and Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
The Scream
Edvard Munch's The Scream recently garnered a record breaking $119.9 million at Sotheby’s in New York. Despite the "tasty narrative potential" of the iconic artwork, the Pulitizer Prize winning art critic Holland Cotter thinks that the painting's new owner spent their vast sum of money unwisely.
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What’s Lost
We tend to take it for granted that the world needs more translated works. The dictates of common wisdom state that reading translated works help us understand the reality of foreign cultures. But what if translation, which erases at least some nuance from works of literature, instead “sifts out the foreign or the unsettling in the name of easy consumption”? In The Irish Times, Michael Cronin reviews a recent book by NYU professor Emily Apter.
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Five-Million-Alarm Fires
Perhaps inspired by the news, first reported a few years ago, that mad scientists in the Indian army plan to weaponize superhot chilis, Lauren Collins ventures bravely into the world of extreme heat. As a warning to readers who fancy themselves tough, she quotes a doctor who makes clear that these peppers aren’t just hot -- they’re lethal.
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Acts of gruesomely violent chivalry and vehicular aggression.
Yet another entry for the list of all time greatest single-purpose tumblrs: Witless Innuendo, bringing you "a collection of those end-of-review warnings from The New York Times' film critics."
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The Ethics of Illegal Downloads
None other than Randy Cohen, "The Ethicist" of the New York Times, has decided that illegally downloading an e-book version of a book for which you've already paid full price in hardcover is "not unethical... subsequent downloading is akin to buying a CD, then copying it to your iPod." He adds, "Sadly, the anachronistic conventions of bookselling and copyright law lag the technology."
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Coetzee Archive to the Harry Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas made headlines when it acquired the David Foster Wallace archives. Now it's added another high profile author to its collection: J. M. Coetzee.
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