No surprise here — Elena Ferrante fever continues to sweep the literary world. Last week, an Italian historian was forced to deny claims that she was actually the Neapolitan novelist. Now, The Guardian takes a look at the unique history of pseudonyms and posits whether Ferrante’s mystery might outlast some famous historical masqueraders. For the unacquainted, here’s a quick piece on reading Italy through Ferrante’s work.
I Am Not Elena Ferrante
Plea of Innocence
Recommended Reading: On the ethics of self-publishing or: Can a convicted serial killer publish his version of the story?
The Book Prisons Fear
The New York Times dives into why prisons fear the New Jim Crow certain states have gone to great efforts to allow their prisons to ban it and in other states it's fairly difficult to obtain if you're a prisoner. We're big fans of the New Jim Crow here; it was a Millions staff pick and extremely popular on Year in Reading lists back in 2013.
A 2BR/2BA of your Own
Broke New York writers - by which we mean, New York writers - take note: the city's Department of Housing is allotting a small number of $1,022 two-bedroom apartments to working artists through a convenient online application. (If that's too rich for your blood, though, we've also noted previously that Write a House is giving away free houses to writers in Detroit.)
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Tilting at Political Office
"He represents a failure of empiricism — an unreliability arising not from the absence of rationality, but from the stubborn complexity of perception. This, I would argue, is precisely how the 2016 election went down." In an article for The Los Angeles Review of Books, Aaron R. Hanlon argues that Cervantes' classic provides the perfect framework for understanding contemporary America, concluding that "Don Quixote is such a player in US politics that he might as well run for office." Our own C. Max Magee read Quixote not long after founding the site, deeming it "essential to all who wish to understand 'the novel' as a literary form."
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Ancient Welsh Book To Be Made Available Online
A 13th century Welsh book originally written by monks on pages of animal skin has finally been made available online thanks to the country's National Library. The ancient Book of Aneirin contains the Gododdin, one of the oldest poems ever written in the language.
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