The New York Times Book Review commissioned a work of fiction about the election from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She chose to write about Melania Trump. If you can handle more Trump, check out Greg Chase’s portrait of a Trump supporter, based on Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury.
The Arrangements
The Most Important Scene in CMBYN
Some people may not have realized the Oscar nominated Call Me By Your Name was originally a novel. André Aciman wrote an essay for Vanity Fair on the process of watching his novel adapted into film, in particular what it was like watching the scene he calls the most important come to life. Read the essay plus what author Martha Southgate had to say about the novel for her 2007 Year in Reading essay. And then go see the film!
Shakespeare’s Dictionary
Shakespeare invented more than 1,000 words when he was writing, and now we might be able to find out how. Two New York booksellers believe they have found Shakespeare’s annotated dictionary, John Baret’s An Alvearie or Quadruple Dictionarie. Although scholars aren’t quite convinced, you can read the dictionary in full to decide for yourself.
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A Bookish Father’s Day
Looking for the perfect book for Father’s Day, but didn’t find quite what you were looking for in our list? Lit Hub has some supplemental titles you might be interested in.
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More from Leon Wieseltier
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about this year’s Brandeis commencement, at which New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier argued that the humanities are under siege in America. In this week’s issue of Prospect Magazine, Malcolm Nicholson interviews Wieseltier, who claims that “we live in a culture of worthless praise.”
Pride and Prejudice Continued
The short shelf of books written by Jane Austen has been recently supplemented by many imaginative efforts–Jane Austen as an amateur detective, and several works depicting Austen characters (or Jane herself) as a vampire, a zombie or some other Gothic monster. So what’s next? Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James is Pride and Prejudice continued.
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The Back of the Face
“A neck cannot be modern. A neck is in time, belongs to time, but is not formed by it. My guess is that even photos of Neanderthal necks would not differ significantly… [They are] in a certain sense, pure nature. Something that grows in a certain place, the way tree trunks grow, or mussels, fungi, moss.” Recommended reading: Karl Ove Knausgaard on the sanctity of bodies, the nature of truth, and the back of the neck. The third volume of Knausgaard’s bestselling My Struggle hit American bookshelves last week. (Check out our own review of Knausgaard’s previous volumes.)
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Can’t think of a bigger waste of time/talent. I don’t mean this as a political statement – same thing would apply to Hill-fic – only that this sort of thing is utterly ephemeral and disposable. The absolute worst kind of writing is assigned writing. The prose here is beyond limp, it’s just sad.
I enjoyed reading it.