Recommended Reading: On translating the literature of smaller European nations.
The Other Side of Europe
Gay Goth Look
“JUST STRAIGHT UP STANDING ON THE EDGE OF A CLIFF YELLING AT THE NIGHT,” and other portraits of the inimitable Greek poet Sappho, ranked in order of how bummed out she looks.
Decadence and Poetry
“To say that late Victorian poetry is bleak would be akin to remarking that Wilkie Collins had a decent knack for plotting a novel. These poems are freighted with Gothic overtones, and it is not uncommon for some supernatural phenomenon to intrude upon what had started out as a seemingly harmless quatrain. We often encounter Death himself—or the Devil—who is something of a literary celebrity for the decadent poets. But what marks the best of these poems is that the outré is in service to something that we can think of as more desperate, and, wouldn’t you know, human.” Over at The Boston Review, an online-only essay looking at the peculiarities of Victorian decadent poetry.
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And a Bomber Pilot
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Tuesday New Release Day: Pynchon, Baker, McNair, Boccaccio
Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Bleeding Edge, which we covered in several Curiosities, is out this week. Also out: Traveling Sprinkler by Nicholson Baker; Pickett’s Charge by Charles McNair; and a new translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron by UT-Austin professor Wayne Rebhorn. (For more on these and other upcoming titles, check out our Great 2013 Second-half Book Preview.)
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The Middlesteins On a Budget
You can treat yourself to The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg for the low price of $2.99. As readers of the book will find out: it’s hard to resist treats…
Philip Roth Disses Fiction
Philip Roth, one of America’s most distiguished and prolific novelists, tells the Financial Times that he no longer reads fiction. Why not? “I don’t know,” he says. “I wised up.”
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They Put a Spell on Her
“Maybe I could find some peace there, or a husband. Maybe it would be like going home.” Katherina Grace Thomas writes for Guernica about Nina Simone‘s three beautiful years in Liberia during the 1970s. See also: Bill Morris on the Hollywood biopic.