“Elizabeth Hardwick, a formidable feminist in a different key, declared, ‘I don’t know what happened. She got swept too far. She deliberately made herself ugly and wrote those extreme and ridiculous poems.’” On the (difficult) art and activism of Adrienne Rich.
Crystallized Political Commitments
“The serious critic ultimately loves his subject more than he loves his reader”
Though everyone is tired of the online critics are too nice/ do critics even matter debate cropping up everywhere as of late, Daniel Mendelsohn's "Critic's Manifesto" may be the best thing to come out of the conversation yet: a clear formulation of what it means to be a critic and why that matters.
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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Finnegans Wake Hits Chinese Shelves
I don’t know how they managed to translate the thunderwords into Chinese, but if sales figures indicate success, they did a bang up job. Finnegans Wake is huge in China right now.
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“Great pendulous melons dangled like gods”
Recommended Reading: “The Pumpkin Tree” by Robert Wrigley.
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The World’s Most Expensive Book
The world’s most expensive book (having previously fetched $8.8 million) is auctioned yet again.
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What Was I Saying?
Recommended Reading: “Happy Birthday to Me” by Nicole Sealey