“We are hermits, that is true. We live in tiny rooms, and we stay in those rooms hours upon hours every day, every month, every year. But we also like to walk around and throw ourselves into big crates of tomatoes, and roll around in them, and then get up all tomato-stained.” Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera talks about living life as a poet (which apparently includes a lot of tomatoes) in an interview with the Guardian.
Poets and Tomatoes
Wizard Jail
Recommended Reading: Hannah Rose-Woods on totalitarianism in the wizarding world.
Reading Lists Amended
Remember when Esquire released their not-so-great list of eighty books every man should read? Well, they have amended their list to eighty books every person should read, asking advice from “eight female literary powerhouses” including Roxane Gay, Michiko Kakutani and Lauren Groff. Our own Janet Potter recommends twenty-eight books you should read if you want to.
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King Braggadocio
“I was dropping out of college and had begun a novel and returned to New York. A bookstore in Manhattan announced a rare reading and signing by Anthony Burgess, a primary hero of mine at the time, for his autodidact’s erudition and braggadocio, and for how he’d gentrified a number of outre genres just by picking them up and mingling them with his erudition and braggadocio.” At the LARB, Jonathan Lethem remembers a formative reading by the author.
Someone Should Try This on Jeopardy
No wonder trivia night at the local bar is such a hit. A new study finds that “drinkers got more test questions right and were quicker in delivering the right answers” after they’d had a few beforehand.
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Remembering the Novel
If novels are written to remind us of our mistakes and we keep repeating those mistakes, why read novels at all?, asks Alberto Manguel. Richard Lea discusses authors’ views on the relationship between the novel and memory at The International Forum on the Novel.
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