“I’ve come to understand that I’ll rarely experience that first rush of discovery again, and perhaps that’s the problem with re-reading. It reminds us both of where we’ve been and where we can’t go again.” Sarah Seltzer wonders why do we reread books as children but not as adults? Pair with Lisa Levy‘s essay on “The Pleasures and Perils of Rereading.”
Rereading
The Crowning
After his death, fans of David Foster Wallace canonized him as a prophet, according him a degree of benevolence shared by almost no one in American letters. In New York Magazine, Christian Lorentzen argues that Wallace himself worried about this happening, and says he’d “probably be the last person to argue for his sainthood.” His essay pairs nicely with Jonathan Russell Clark on The David Foster Wallace Reader.
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The Not-So-Invisible Man
"The novel is told from the perspective of an unnamed African-American narrator who considers himself to be socially invisible due to the color of his skin," writes Variety. Following in the footsteps of its adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Hulu is in the beginning stages of adapting Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Read our own editor Lydia Kiesling on Ellison's Invisible Man.
Melville House withdraws from Amazon’s Best Translated Book Awards
Citing Amazon's "predatory and thuggish practices," Melville House has withdrawn from future participation in the Best Translated Book Awards.
Zen State
Recommended Reading: Brett Elizabeth Jenkins's poem "To Get to Zen" at Paper Darts. "you must first lose your/shit in an elevator/in front of a man you do not know."
Friendly Neighborhood
Comics fans will know that a new Marvel storyline may -- just possibly -- reunite Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. This has, understandably, produced a range of reactions, not least of which is this piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who argues that the two embody a healthy marriage. “[Their] marriage was a rejection of the macho ideal of romance—which reigns even among nerds—and it mirrored and confirmed my own budding sense of what love was at a very young age,” he writes. You could also read Paul Morton on the character of Peter Parker.
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