Believe it or not, Fifty Shades of Grey was still the bestselling book of 2015. For a fascinating, in-depth look at what sold and what didn’t, head over to The Guardian. The disconnect between the retail top ten and the myriad year-end lists alone is worth the look.
Fifty Shades Again
Holy the First Pitch!
Beat poet Allen Ginsberg once threw out a surprisingly decent first pitch at a San Francisco Giants game while wearing a pocket protector. Seriously. Here’s our own Bill Morris with a little more on Ginsberg, Beats, and film.
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A Hideous Play
“Titus Andronicus is a hideous play…. In other words, it’s one of those tragedies that was just crying out for an illustrated edition.” View Leonard Baskin’s grotesque etchings of Titus Andronicus in The Paris Review.
A [BARK] Very Literary [BARK] Interview
Claire Messud and James Wood might be “the First Couple of American Fiction,” but I’d also argue that their dachshund, Myskhin, is “the first Dachshund of American Magazine Profiles.” (Sorry, Felix Shteyngart.)
Dune in the Age of Aquarius
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Melodious Sound Patterings
“Reaching the end of a Babstock poem, I often felt (and still often feel) stunned into a kind of numinous awe.” Stewart Cole for Partisan on Ken Babstock and the state of Canadian poetry. Continue with confidence on your quest through the Canadian canon with the help of this guide by our very own Michael Bourne.
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New Critical Flame
Issue three of The Critical Flame has arrived. Richard Nash’s review of Ted Striphas’ The Late Age of Print is a highlight.
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