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
Dog Days in Tehran
Azadeh Moaveni writes about what it was like to own her dog, named London, in Iran: “Most Turks, like most Iranians, recoiled from dogs as though they were grotesque vermin; only ‘guard’ dogs, charged with protecting humans and their goods, were deemed less offensive, though still repellent.” To Moaveni, it was like cultural rebellion.
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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 Poor Man’s Jaron Lanier?
I recently sat down for a long and wide-ranging interview with The Faster Times. Topics covered include technology, Taco Bell, technology, Richard Yates, technology, Friday Night Lights, and…er…Internet self-promotion.
North Woods Winter Watercolor
Recommended Reading: Oliver Bendorf’s poetry comic “Experiment With Color in a North Woods Winter” at Hobart.
No Word on Receipts Yet
“Ms. Gitelman’s argument may seem like an odd lens on familiar history. But it’s representative of an emerging body of work that might be called ‘paperwork studies.’ True, there are not yet any dedicated journals or conferences. But in history, anthropology, literature and media studies departments and beyond, a group of loosely connected scholars are taking a fresh look at office memos, government documents and corporate records, not just for what they say but also for how they circulate and the sometimes unpredictable things they do.”