In Case You Missed It: This email exchange between playwright Sarah Ruhl and the late Max Ritvo, whose Four Reincarnations is out next week: “I think my mind is a set of lapis lazuli steps falling apart, and all I want is to be told ‘it’s alright, we rebuild it every day’ But what is the it? What is it? And if I was vaporized by a ray gun but was then replaced instantly by an identical person with an identical filigree of nerves shot through with identical sparks cased in an identical skull—would it still be me? I don’t think so. I don’t know if even a perfect Reincarnation would be a Reincarnation to me, in my heart. I’m starting to feel like Theseus and I just want my fucking ship out of the dry-dock and back on the water.”
The Night I Am Heading Into
Free JSTOR Articles
JSTOR will be making 500,000 articles from over 200 journals freely available to the public. These will include items published before 1923 in the US, and published before 1870 abroad. Earlier this month, I rounded up a few pieces by people who think the entire database should be free.
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The Girl Who Continued A Series Posthumously
Stieg Larsson’s Swedish publishers have hired David Lagercrantz to write a fourth novel in the best-selling Millennium trilogy. Lagercrantz’s last book was a biography of soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Olivia Rutigliano Discovers an Unconventional Ghost Story
Ellen Raskin’s classic murder mystery, The Westing Game, is also a surprising, meta-ghost story.
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“Everything goes and nothing matters.”
Recommended Reading: “When Literature Was Dangerous,” a history of censorship and the development of a culture “in which literature lacks urgency” and, perhaps, significance.
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400 Year of Shakespeare
To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, check out 25 author’s reflections on his work. (The tube map has also been recreated in his honor.) You could also read Stefanie Peters’s thoughts on why we continue to rewrite the Bard’s stories.
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Homes for Old Kindles
Tired of that ancient Kindle sitting around, gathering dust? Now you can trade it in.
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An Objective Look at Seven M.F.A. Rejections
At McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, an objective look at seven M.F.A. program rejections compared to other historic rejections.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Danielewski; Enright; Shepard; Gibson; Lutz; Novic; Greenfeld; Gessen
Out this week: The Familiar, Volume 1 by Mark Z. Danielewski; The Green Road by Anne Enright; The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard; The Edge Becomes The Center by DW Gibson; The Daemon Knows by Harold Bloom; How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz; Girl at War by Sara Novic; The Subprimes by Karl Taro Greenfeld; and City by City, an essay collection edited by Keith Gessen and Stephen Squibb. For more on these books and other new titles, go read our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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