Recommended Reading: Almost a century ago, two students at Oxford wrote back to Ophelia: “Ophelia racked with phantasy, / And Sigismunda, sick with rue — / Ladies, why did ye choose to die / When all the world was made for you?” Find out more about the poets Doreen Wallace and Eleanore Geach at The Toast. We recently wrote about why authors continually turn to Shakespeare.
Answering Ophelia
How Many Spaces After A Period?
According to Slate: “Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.”
●
●
Every Word of The Great Gatsby…On Stage
In this week’s New Yorker, Rebecca Mead writes about the 8-hour staging of the full text of The Great Gatsby – “Gatz” – at the Public Theater. She and actor Scott Shepherd discuss it on a podcast.
Beer-Hall Brute
Alright, time to fess up – who keeps buying all these Mein Kampfs? This piece from The Daily Beast takes a look at Hitler’s 800-page tome and questions why people continue to buy it despite the fact that “it might be dull as one of those many lunchtime monologues that bored Frau Goebbels cross-eyed.”
●
●
Some Choice DFW Links
GQ offers an insightful interview with The New Yorker‘s Deborah Treisman on the subject of editing David Foster Wallace…while elsewhere, the German translation of Infinite Jest – Un Endlicher Spass – becomes an unlikely hit. (via)
●
●
Ulysses in Covers
“Happiness was born a twin.”
Robert and Richard Kalich are identical twins, and their family had the misfortune of having them both grow up to be writers.
●
●
Cool For Us
Eileen Myles, the poet and self-described “loudmouthed lesbian (which means mainstream invisible)” has given One Grand Books a list of her ten favorite books from the Djuna Barnes classic Nightwood to John Wieners’s Supplication: Selected Poems. Here’s a complementary Millions essay on Eileen Myles and the fugitive form.
●
●