The Guardian has a list of its five favorite on-campus novels, including Jeffrey Eugenides‘ The Marriage Plot, which we ran an excerpt of back when it came out, and Donna Tartt‘s The Secret History, whose connections to the academy we’ve also explored on the site.
Back to School
Where Words Go
Recommended Reading: Jenny Diski on our lost words. “So I had a thought about writing a book for the elderly, the old. Those who have lost their words more comprehensively than the friends around our lunch table, but haven’t lost themselves entirely. A book about where all the words go, where after a time they find the others and collaborate to make sentences.”
●
●
That Was How He Was
"The last line of Saul Bellow's 'A Single Dish' is nothing like poetry. I can’t tell you what any single one of those words means. Imagine you’re a lexicographer and you have to define the word that, or how. And on top of this, there’s none of Bellow’s typical play with rhythm and language—it’s almost a non-sentence. And yet, when I get to it in the story, I weep." Ethan Canin at The Atlantic on how Saul Bellow packs so much emotion into a single sentence. Here are a couple Bellow-related Millions links for your perusing pleasure.
●
●
Cracking the Code
The world's oldest undeciphered writing is currently in the process of being deciphered.
●
●
Reading in Prison
"[H]is authentic education as a reader began not while he was a history major at N.Y.U. or working at a literary agency in Manhattan but at the Green Haven Correctional Facility, in Stormville, New York. There, he offered, he had read a thousand and forty-six books." Alex Halberstadt writes about "A Prisoner's Reading List" for The New Yorker. It's available online, and soon a lot more New Yorker articles will be too.
2 comments:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
Smells Like Teen Spirit
"APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land,/we’re graduating in may/do we seriously still have to do the reading/theres like three weeks left you cant be serious." You know T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland," but have you read Mallory Ortberg's "The Teenage Wasteland" at The Toast?
●
●
But Who Hates On The Haters?
Jonathan Franzen’s Kraus Project should be “a match made in heaven,” writes Jacob Mikanowski, because of how it pairs together “the old hater [Karl Kraus] and the new [Franzen], the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid of cultural criticism drawn together across the gulf of a century to take on all comers.” Alas, the end result is instead a “strange and rather discordant experience, like receiving a deep tissue massage while being spat on from a great height.” (Bonus: One of the best London Review of Books openers of all time.)
●
●
Richard Russo’s STRAIGHT MAN, should be on that list.
I’d also vote for Galatea 2.2 and White Noise, if we’re amending!