Recommended Reading: This excerpt from The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains by Thomas Laqueur. In it, Laqueur explores the cultural peculiarities of mourning and the necrobotany of the yew tree, or “tree of the dead.”
Mythic Beginnings
Out of Nowhere
Nell Zink, whose second novel comes out next week, has one of the lit world’s more unusual origin stories. An expat in Germany, she wrote her first novel in three weeks, after striking up a friendship over email with Jonathan Franzen. In the latest New Yorker, Kathryn Schulz details her story in full. You could also read Emily Gould’s recommendation of her work for Year in Reading.
‘Best American’ on the Cheap
Pretty good deal on Amazon today: All the e-book versions of the "Best American" books are $1.99.
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DeLillo Reads in Brooklyn
Speaking of Point Omega, here's Vanity Fair's write-up of a rare DeLillo bookstore appearance, complete with conspiracy theorists and a fainting fangirl. It was sort of like a visit to the World's Most Photographed Barn.
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Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ex-Husband Can also Write a Memoir
The former Mrs. Elizabeth Gilbert--that is, Michael Cooper, the husband Gilbert left at the opening of Eat Pray Love, has apparently written a book about his life after their divorce. Will it ever be published?
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Home in the Apocalypse
"My mind moves toward apocalypse fictions the way we think about a forgotten friend, or a partner that’s left us—grief becomes its own comfort." Adnan Khan writes for Hazlitt about how apocalypse fictions mirror the immigrant experience and vice versa.
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Lit Reactor’s Literary Tattoo Contest
Do you have literary ink? No, not that kind. We're talking tattoos. Lit Reactor wants to see your Moby-Dick-themed tramp stamps, and your Le Petit Prince-themed bicep tats.
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Canonical Comics
The world's great literature as comics and visuals. Though, as Steven Heller points out in The Atlantic, defining the canon is a contentious task, comics or no.
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