NPR launched a new storybook project on Tuesday. Check out their Tumblr and see what parents (for example, Amy Chua and Edwidge Danticat) are reading to their kids. Pair with our own Kevin Hartnett’s essay on reconnecting with children’s books as an adult.
Reading Childhood
Excuse this dust.
Have you been reading Michelle Dean's Saturday History Lessons over at The Rumpus? This weekend she wrote on Dorothy Parker's ashes, which are, apparently, in Baltimore. Also, this one, on Flannery O'Connor and her best pen pal Betty Hester, is great.
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Charles Wright is Our New Poet Laureate
You can get acquainted with Charles Wright, the nation’s newest Poet Laureate, by checking out interviews he did with StorySouth and The Paris Review, and also by reading his work – much of which can be found online. Might I suggest this poem, which was published by the VQR?
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Tuesday New Release Day: Sekaran; Lopate; Coover; Schweblin; Peelle; D’Agostino; Zhang; Doctorow
Out this week: Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran; A Mother’s Tale by Phillip Lopate; Huck Out West by Robert Coover; Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin; The Midnight Cool by Lydia Peelle; The Antiques by Kris D'Agostino; Lotus by Lijia Zhang; and Collected Stories by E.L. Doctorow. For more on these and other new titles, go read our latest book preview.
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Anne Carson’s Latest
Anne Carson, author of Nox (reviewed by Jane Alison last year), has a new book out, Antigonick, in which the translator and poet collaborates with an artist and designer to produce an unconventional translation of Antigone. Unfortunately, Amanda Shubert calls it “the first book of Carson’s where … her scholarly impulse barricades textual meanings. Usually it provides a generous way in.” Yet despite its problems, Shubert notes there are still “moments of brilliance,” and indeed the act of “doing Sophocles as a graphic novel … is kind of ingenious.”
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Gives a Whole New Meaning to “Posting Up with a Book”
For those awkward outdoor situations in which you can't overtly clutch a book to passively inform onlookers "hey, I read," Fieldcandy has designed a tent that looks like a book.
Crime and Punishment
Johnny Depp’s latest film, Black Mass, which casts the star as Whitey Bulger, hit theaters on September 18th. At Publishers Weekly, author T. J. English argues that Where the Bodies Were Buried: Whitey Bulger and the World That Made Him is necessary to the canon of literature on Bulger, even if it's the 16th book about the mobster.
Free That Verse
From the Beat poet to the particularly heroic couplet, here's a handy illustration of poetic justice from Grant Snider over at The New York Times.
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