“JUST STRAIGHT UP STANDING ON THE EDGE OF A CLIFF YELLING AT THE NIGHT,” and other portraits of the inimitable Greek poet Sappho, ranked in order of how bummed out she looks.
Gay Goth Look
The Threat of Death
The New Yorker has published the chapter of Salman Rushdie's forthcoming memoir, Joseph Anton, that describes the circumstances of his life immediately after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's spiritual leader in 1989, called for his execution by proclaiming a fatwā on the writer, after the controversial treatment of Islamic history and the Prophet Muhammad in The Satanic Verses. PEN American, by the way, accepts donations online.
Book & Beer
To kick off German Literature Month, Melville House's marketing manager picked the best beers to drink as you read Heinrich Böll. Now Dogfish Head's brewmaster Sam Calagione has paired beers with a few other literary classics.
Tough Sell
Did Patrick Modiano deserve the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature? Wrong question, our own Bill Morris writes in The Daily Beast. The right question is: Why is foreign fiction in translation still such a tough sell for American publishers?
A Bombing Hits Home
Recommended Reading: On the recent terrorist attacks in Ankara, and longing for home.
Cost of the Memoir
“My parents really don’t like that book. It embarrassed and saddened them and they didn’t understand why I would air my dirty laundry in public. They’ve had some time to sit with it and now they’re more supportive of what I do as a memoirist. I think they see the value of telling your story now. It’s still a tender subject and I wouldn’t say that they exactly love the book now, but at least it’s an open dialogue.” Jillian Lauren speaks on the cost of telling one’s truth publicly and her memoir Some Girls: My Life in a Harem. Pair with a piece by our own Michael Bourne on the art and business of memoirs.
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