Some corners of the literary world were confused last week when news hit about the passing of Beatles producer George Martin, forcing Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin to make this statement: “While it is strangely moving to realize that so many people around the world care so deeply about my life and death, I have to go with Mark Twain and insist that the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. It was Sir George Martin, of Beatles fame, who has passed away. Not me.”
I’m Not Dead Yet!
Rejecting Tidy Narratives
For Lenny, Lidia Yuknavitch talks about suffering, art, and her path to writing. “I believe in art the way other people believe in God,” she says. For more of her writing, check out her Millions essay on grief that births art.
Unfamiliar Discourse
Recommended Reading: Je Banach on what literary discourse offers in an age of extremism. For Banach, literary discourse is “the language of our future because it is the language of confronting that which is foreign to us.”
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Skirmishing With the Eminati
Look out, Darwin — Wolfe’s coming for you. Tom Wolfe’s new book, The Kingdom of Speech, which we reviewed a couple of days ago, takes aim at Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky: “Like an industrial engineer who also makes bespoke dueling pistols in his shed on the weekends, Mr. Wolfe has made a side career of skirmishing with the eminati (his term) in an array of cultural fields. If fighting enlivens one’s mornings, Mr. Wolfe has had little need of caffeine.”
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The Corset Cause
Recommended Reading: The Paris Review has put its Zadie Smith short story “Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets” online. “New York just expects so much from a girl—acts like it can’t stand even the idea of a wasted talent or opportunity. And Miss Adele had been around.”
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Curiosities: Busking for Vampires
Our friend “Tom” finds that music soothes the savage vampire.Joseph O’Neill explores the “wholesome… misanthropy” of Flannery O’Connor.The Nation offers up a depressing assessment of the book business: “It is a confused, confusing and very fluid situation, and no one can predict how books and readers will survive.””Why Donald Duck Is the Jerry Lewis of Germany“NPR talks to the author of the just published biography, Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life.Daniel Green launches new online journal Critical Distance.”Will Philadelphia be the place where the American newspaper dies?” (via)The Complete Review considers Bolaño’s Amulet.
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Effing up The New Yorker
Mary Norris on the cusswords permitted to run in The New Yorker over the years. Sadly, the piece is not titled “Fuck This Shit.“
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