Recommended Reading: In The Atlantic, Alaa Al Aswany shows how literature can inspire empathy by analyzing one word, “also,” in Dostoyevsky’s The House of the Dead. Al Aswany also has a new book out this week, featured in our latest New Release Day.
Also, Empathy
New Quarterly Conversation
A new issue of The Quarterly Conversation covers Gaddis, Müeller, and the Nordic masculinity of Per Petterson, among other topics.
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The Island of Last Chances
Have you ever had a script rejected? Did you reassure yourself it had to do with just about anything other than the quality of your writing? Well now’s the chance to put your money where your mouth is – a new Hollywood startup called Adaptive Studios is “rummaging through the trash” and breathing new life into dead movie scripts.
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Getting Directions from Jack Kerouac
Want to retrace Sal and Dean’s On the Road journey? The Placing Literature app lets you explore with your favorite characters by mapping scenes from novels. There are 1,500 destinations currently, but you can add your favorite novels or your own work.
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Seduction Through Literature
At The Paris Review Daily, Sarah Fay ruminates on her questionable practice of using literature to seduce men: “Wasn’t I just trying to bribe men hungry for something to read? … How could I deliver book recommendations for an entire marriage?”
“Smudged pink harlequin glasses”
Last week, I pointed readers to a Page-Turner essay by Amy Bloom, whose new novel, Lucky Us, came out on Tuesday. Now, as part of the By the Book series in the Times, she talks about her summertime reads, her first picture book and who she’d invite to a literary dinner party. (FYI, we’ve written about the series before.)
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Speaking of The New Yorker…
Is just me, or has The New Yorker been resurgent the last few weeks? In addition to the David Grann piece mentioned below, we’ve gotten: Bloomberg, diving, James Wood‘s most cogent essay to date on atheism and belief, and a F-B-P triple play. (That’s Friend to Bilger to Paumgarten, for those keeping score at home.) And I read the fiction for five issues in a row – a personal best. I know they assemble these things far in advance, but it still feels like the Ian Frazier “Siberia” two-parter, eight years in the making, started some kind of conflagration of awesomeness. Thoughts?
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Everyone’s a Critic
“A continuation of a book that has proved very popular seldom is successful, and we cannot say that we think Alice’s adventures by any means equal to her previous ones.” The Guardian digs up its original review of Lewis Carroll‘s Through the Looking Glass.
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