Robert Birnbaum interviews Cynthia Ozick at The Morning News. “Fiction shouldn’t say something, it should make you feel.” If you want to read more from Ozick, check out our interview with her.
Make You Feel
Some Thoughts on Celebrity Book Clubs
“A few weeks ago, I texted my writing group, ‘All I really want is to be just famous enough to have my own celebrity book club.’ I was kind of kidding. But I kind of wasn’t. Because, like portion-packaged organic snacks delivered to your door, isn’t book club ownership one step closer to having it all?” Laura Briskman on the faux intimacy of celebrity book clubs, as more and more celebrities start their own post Oprah.
Fitting Together Fragments of Narrative with Hala Alyan
Hala Alyan discusses her new novel, The Arsonists' City, and how her work as a clinical psychologist informs her writing.
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Take Your Vitamins
Did Gollum have a vitamin D deficiency? In the Medical Journal of Australia, Joseph A. Hopkinson and Nicholas S. Hopkinson posit that the Lord of the Rings saga could’ve been prevented had the inhabitants of Middle Earth just gotten a little more sunlight. “Systematic textual analysis of The Hobbit supports our initial hypothesis that the triumph of good over evil may be assisted to some extent by the poor diet and lack of sunlight experienced by the evil characters.”
Oscar Wilde: An Infographic
The Guardian broke down Oscar Wilde’s most enduring and quotable aphorisms, and presented the entire thing as an infographic. For serious fans of the Irish wit, perhaps the effect of this chart may lead to an “infogasm.”
American Literature in the 19th Century
“American literature in the 19th century speaks in the 21st in terms we have not yet abandoned – for all our technology, globalism, and panache.” (via Arts and Letters Daily)
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