Over at Catapult, Benjamin Wood writes about his eulogy for his grandfather, which led to his writing of The Ecliptic. As he puts it, “Or maybe, in this time of grieving, I was thinking only with my heart until my head began to listen. Today, it seems as though the entirety of The Ecliptic was held within my consciousness before I ever glimpsed a piece of it, and grief was what enabled me to notice.” Pair with Nagihan Haliloğlu’s Millions review of the novel.
Standing on the Bridge of Grief
Thanks, Amigo
In his upcoming book Borrowed Words, Philip Durkin looked at the languages that have shaped English over the centuries, charting the influence of Spanish, Italian, French and more. At Slate, he sums up his most important data with the help of an interactive tool.
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Brunonia
Recommended Reading: Chris Power on Maxim Biller’s Inside the Head of Bruno Schulz.
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A Rap on Race
Check out this conversation between Margaret Mead and James Baldwin on race, guilt, and responsibility.
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All She Can Ever Know
"I am writing a book my father will never see. Not in its entirety, not out in the world." For Longreads, Nicole Chung writes about adoption, family, writing, and finishing her upcoming memoir, All You Can Ever Know, in the wake of her father's sudden death. Pair with: Julie Buntin's Year in Reading entry which feature's Chung's memoir.
Juan Goytisolo: 1931-2017
The Washington Post reports that Spanish writer and Cervantes Prize winner Juan Goytisolo has died at age 86. Bruna Dantas Lobato wrote about Goytisolo's 1970 novel of dispossession Count Julian for us, noting that "[j]ust like the nature of exile itself, the narrative offers no relief, no place of rest: just fragment after fragment of dry landscapes, lonely characters, and rooms in disarray."
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New Directions in The Coffin
The Coffin Factory, a "magazine for people who love books," interviews New Directions' Barbara Epler and Tom Roberge about "publishing and finding bold, new experiments in literature from around the world." (via)
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Book Cover Contests
Venus Febriculosa, currently judging entries for its Name of the Rose book-cover design contest, has opened up another contest, this one to design a "cover" for Eugenio Montale's poem, "The Eel."
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