Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, launches his novel Belgravia today, and it’s bringing back serialization. Our own Garth Risk Hallberg writes on the literary pedigree of Downton Abbey.
Serial Stories
Black Bodies Online
“I couldn’t help but feel that technology had circled back to some of its earliest purposes: broadcasting anti-black violence as widely as possible, as both entertainment and warning.” Our own Ismail Muhammad writes for Real Life about the tension between bearing witness and perpetuating paradigms of white supremacy while on the web. And if you haven’t yet read it, do spend some time with this review of Nate Marshall‘s Wild Hundreds, which provides some fortification.
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Eliot Reflects on “Prufrock”
The 92nd Street Y has released a never-before-heard 1950 recording of T.S. Eliot reading many of his most famous poems and delivering comments on craft.
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What Kind
At Boston Review, check out a new poem from Maggie Nelson. At The Millions, Leslie Jamison includes Nelson’s Bluets and The Art of Cruelty in A Year in Reading.
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“Linguistic loot”
Recommended Reading: Kate Manning on the “slumgullions” of English.
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Kazuo Ishiguro To Publish First Novel in Ten Years
Next March, Kazuo Ishiguro will publish his first novel since Never Let Me Go. The new book, entitled The Buried Giant, is said to be about “lost memories, love, revenge and war.”
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Vera, or Verdure
Over the course of a half-century, Vladimir Nabokov wrote hundreds of letters to his wife Vera, which are being published in book form this week for the first time. Among other things, they reveal the absurd pet names he invented for her (such as Goosykins and Monkeykins) and display Nabokov musing over whether or not to borrow a friend’s castle for the summer. Also worth reading: our own Garth Risk Hallberg on Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor.
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The American Salander: Rooney Mara
At W, a first look at American actress Rooney Mara in character as Lisbeth Salander. The relatively unknown Mara, recently of David Fincher‘s The Social Network, has been cast as Salander to Daniel Craig‘s Mikael Blomkvist in Fincher’s American film version of Stieg Larsson‘s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The obvious question: does Mara have the chops to outshine Noomi Rapace‘s Salander?
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