Hooray, poetry! This piece from The New York Times highlights three new collections you should consider checking out: Shaler’s Fish by Helen Macdonald, Poems by Ron Rash, and Blue Laws by Kevin Young.
Read, Read, Read
Ask George
Looking to trade memes with the editors of The Paris Review? Not fully convinced that Lorin Stein and Sadie Stein are not in fact related? Then log on to Reddit at 3 PM EST, when the editors will take your questions as part of a joint AMA session.
A Writer’s Day
The Green Road author Anne Enright shares her writing day, over at The Guardian. “22:00 Bedtime stuff with offspring. 23:00 Dishes. Netflix. Two bottles of IPA. Chill.” Pair with Diane Prokop’s Millions interview with the author.
More Barthes
In part because I loved Sam Anderson’s riff on Barthes in this weekend’s NYT Magazine so much, I was thrilled to see Maud Newton tweet this link this 2010 article on Barthes’s handwriting, featuring a slideshow of note cards Barthes used to compose his Mourning Diary.
The Two Philip Roths
“As time passed, I realized the Philip Roth I’d known before the two documentaries we ended up doing was in the process of transformation. The Roth I’d known for many years was an obsessively committed writer who, in the terrifying limbo between one book and another, could fall victim to a storm of depression or be spent to the point of looking as if his blood had been drained from his veins… This Philip Roth seemed to be discovering new, unexpected pleasures in life, like spending time in bed reading in the morning or inviting friends to his home to share with him the meals prepared each night by his newly hired, young and lovely cook.” Livia Manera Sambuy writes about her friendship with Philip Roth for The Believer. Pair with Gabriel Roth‘s recent guide to “everything you need to know” about the elder Roth’s oeuvre.
Reviews of Tom McCarthy’s C
Helen Oyeyemi on Defying Categorization
Visualizing Don Quixote
Visual Editions wants to send photographer Jacob Robinson to La Mancha… by way of camper van. Along the way, he’ll be tasked with “captur[ing] the spirit of Don Quixote” on film and combining his shots with text from Miguel de Cervantes’s novel in order to create a re-imagined, “faithful and contemporary” edition. You can find out more on the effort’s Kickstarter page.