Recommended Reading: Critic James Wood for the New Yorker on one of the most significant literary heroes of the Holocaust, Primo Levi. The three-volume Complete Works of Primo Levi is out this week.
Irony and Equanimity
Tough Sell
Did Patrick Modiano deserve the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature? Wrong question, our own Bill Morris writes in The Daily Beast. The right question is: Why is foreign fiction in translation still such a tough sell for American publishers?
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Reading from the Man Booker Shortlist
We recently announced the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize. At Granta, you can read an excerpt from Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways, included on the list.
Curious Case of the Missing Publishers
What’s going on in Hong Kong? Last week, a man by the name of Lee Bo became the fifth member of the Hong Kong-based publishing house Mighty Current, which specializes in provocative tomes about Beijing leaders, to vanish mysteriously. A few of those missing have been in sporadic communication with worried family members, letting them know in opaque terms that they are “helping with an investigation.”
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Thoughts of a Hand-Wringer
If you were to guess (no cheating) the author of a new essay on hypochondria, who would you guess? Larry David? Calvin Trillin? Or someone a little more… nebbishy?
Beach Boys Reunite
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older? / Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long,” crooned Brian Wilson in The Beach Boys’ 1966 hit “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” The song went on to become the title of Wilson’s autobiography. Now, over half a century later, the crew is finally older, and fans hoping for a reunion won’t have to “wait so long” because the band’s officially announced an upcoming 50th anniversary tour.
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The Power & Popularity of Poetry
In a piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Jonathan Farmer responds to the recent pieces in the New York Times that ask poets to debate the question “does poetry matter?” As Farmer points out, ” it’s a bit like asking a bunch of religious figures if religion matters,” but the conversation is worth following and pairs well with our own recent pieces on poetry’s power and popularity.