“‘What pleases the PUBLIC is always what’s most banal,’ he wrote to his brother in 1883. But nowadays Van Gogh pleases the public enormously. So has he become banal?” Julian Barnes reflects on Van Gogh’s life and work and how our perception of him has changed over time in a London Review of Books podcast. Interested in contemporary art? Check out our own Bill Morris’s piece on the Whitney Museum.
Seeing Van Gogh
That Rare Outlaw
Recommended Reading: Michiko Kakutani on a new biography of Johnny Cash.
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The Problem with the Poky Little Puppy
“The problem is that young children have terrible taste and enjoy garbage. Another problem, which compounds the first problem, is that they want to hear the same books hundreds of times in a row. So for all the joys that storytime can offer, it frequently entails a kind of dismal self-abnegation that’s too excruciating even to describe as tedium—an actively painful sense of my precious time on earth being torn from my chest and tossed into a furnace.” Gabriel Roth writes about the terrible Poky Little Puppy for Slate, and his complaints pair well with Jacob Lambert‘s Millions series, “Are Picture Books Leading Our Children Astray?” and “Again, I Ask…“
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Sports Fiction
In an unexpected crossover of the sporting and the literary, ESPN Magazine is running a sports-themed short fiction contest. They aren’t publicizing it online, but this PDF from the print mag has all the details.
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Translation Troubles
At Words Without Borders, Scott Esposito examines the thorny issues of reviewing books in translation, when it may not be clear exactly who to blame or praise, the author or the translator.
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Ould Soul
You may have heard that the actor Peter O’Toole passed away in London on Saturday. As a tribute, Longform republished a 1963 profile of O’Toole by Gay Talese, who accompanied the Lawrence of Arabia star on a trip to Ireland.
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Teenage Daydream
“Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I myself was no stranger to being othered.” Over at The Literary Hub, Carla Bruce-Eddings recounts some reading lessons from her teenage self. For a bit of perspective from the other side, here’s our own Nick Ripatrazone on teaching high school and college.
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