One of Ursula K. Le Guin’s digital-only stories will be published for the first time in a 50th anniversary omnibus edition of The Tales of Earthsea.
Earthsea Continues
Hughes and Plath Interviewed
Recommended Listening: A 1961 BBC interview with Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Pair with our review of Ted Hughes: The Unauthorized Life.
The Best Single Issue of Any Literary Magazine, Ever
What is the best single issue of any literary magazine? Luna Park nominates Granta 8: Dirty Realism, and explains why.
●
●
Meditations on Meditations in Green
Recommended Reading: Nathaniel Rich discusses Stephen Wright’s Meditations in Green, which he says is remarkable because “it convinces you that the war never ended.” Indeed, Rich writes, the author’s debut novel “suggests that Vietnam at some point transcended the Indochina peninsula and became a mental condition, a state of being not unlike certain forms of insanity, that has become encrypted in our genetic code.”
●
●
The Colonized Space of Language
Recommended Reading: Iona Sharma writes about language as a colonized space, with its own history, politics, and tradition.
Tell Us a Story
Why do the British tell the best children’s stories? Perhaps because their culture has remained in touch with its pagan folklore, whereas in the United States, more pragmatic tales of morality, Christian obedience, and bootstrap-lifting rose to prominence. Also, picture books: general good thing for children or roadmap to total the moral collapse of society?
Storytelling Addict
“Storytelling, she added, is a central part of Native American life, and, inevitably an obsessive part of hers. ‘It’s probably the most selfish thing I do,’ she said. ‘Truly. I don’t do it for anyone else. I do it because I have the addict’s need to get lost in the story.’” Louise Erdrich discusses her new novel LaRose.
●
●
Everything I Say
Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt by Kristin Hersh is a downright mesmerizing elegy to the eclectic singer-songwriter. Part idiot-savant, part deliberate curmudgeon , Vic Chesnutt (who Rolling Stone has called one of the greatest songwriters of all time) was notoriously difficult to spend a lot of time around. Hersh stopped by Electric Literature for an interview about the book and about losing her dear friend Vic. Bonus: for anyone unfamiliar with Chesnutt’s work, this video will get you close.
●
●
When A Critic Becomes An Author
Vanity Fair talks to renowned book critic Michiko Kakutani about her debut The Death of Truth and why she decided to become an author.