Gregory Rabassa, literary translator and professor at Queens College, died this past week. Rabassa helped introduce Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch, among others, to English-language readers. He was 94 years old.
Remembering Gregory Rabassa
Moleskine’s Imminent IPO
A while back, I noted that Moleskine was preparing an initial public offering on the Italian stock exchange. Well, now the time has come. On April 3, you will be allowed to buy shares of the notebook company (and perhaps keep records of them within your Moleskine). If you’re interested, you might want to read up on the company’s history – and also on how to pronounce its name.
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Cain: Selling a Candidate or Selling Books?
Instead of capitalizing on his newfound momentum by hitting the campaign trail hard, Herman Cain this week opted to spend most of his time promoting his book, This is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House, which just arrived in retail stores this week.
The Case for Reparations: An Ongoing Conversation
In order to prolong the conversation around his Atlantic cover story, “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates recently took to Twitter to engage in a Q&A session with his readers. You can scroll through the entire exchange over here. Coates was also interviewed by Ezra Klein for Vox this week, and the resulting video is probably the most valuable piece of content that site has produced since its inception.
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Just a Little Chunk of Change
“Located along a private beach on 235 Middle Neck Road, this opulent Gatsby-inspiring estate spans over 5 acres. A mere 25 minutes away from New York City by boat, this home is the perfect scene for a roaring 20s party. Just picture the glitz and glamour of fireworks reflecting across the water at all hours of the night.” For a cool $16.9 million you, too, can live in the home that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald. Pair with our own Sonya Chung on adding The Great Gatsby to her teaching syllabus.
Wallace Stevens Week
Wallace Stevens Week(s) begin with a sprint today at Big Other, featuring an interview with poet and critic James Longenbach, an essay on Stevens’ other work, in insurance, and a list of his “most maddening, funny and bizarre” titles.
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Toole’s Place in the South
Did you really dig Cory MacLauchlin’s Millions article on The Lost Manuscript to A Confederacy of Dunces? If so, you’ll love this interview with MacLauchlin in Deep South Magazine.
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Amazon’s Programming
Look out, network television. Amazon’s hiring creative executives to shepherd “crowd-sourced scripts” through development.