“They couldn’t testify because they were dead so I wanted to lend my own body and voice to them.” Han Kang on writing about the Gwangju massacre and her slim novels, Human Acts and The Vegetarian.
On Violence
Bond. Sixty Years of Bond.
Beth Carswell takes a look at sixty years’ worth of James Bond book designs. Which one is your favorite?
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Oratory Passion
The best Fourth of July speech? Frederick Douglass delivered it on July 5, 1852. Pair with a reading list for July.
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“Your brain on metaphors”
"What’s emerging from these studies isn’t just a theory of language or of metaphor. It’s a nascent theory of consciousness." Michael Chorost writes about the importance of metaphors in literature and the brain.
“I’ve set the bar quite high in terms of storytelling”
Fifty Shades of Grey author E L James has two more books up her sleeve, USA Today reports. One is another erotic novel, but the other is intended for young adults.
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Bully Pulpit
Speaking of France: whether or not you find him disagreeable, Michel Houellebecq is pretty much guaranteed to elicit an emotional response from readers. His new opinion piece in The New York Times is no different. Here’s a review of Houellebecq’s The Map and the Territory that refers to him as a “petty misanthrope.”