“Terrific ham. The best. Terrific eggs. Were they green? Who knows? So many years.” In case you missed it, the best tweets from yesterday’s #TrumpBookReport trend. Pair with our own Claire Cameron‘s translation of Lauren Groff‘s Fates and Furies for Twitter.
Terrific Ham
Coetzee on Murray
Millions favorite J. M. Coetzee analyzes “the angry genius” of Les Murray for The New York Review of Books.
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Hardly Working
Why is it okay to say “I’m working on a novel” but not okay to say “I’m working on my novel”? The former is a normal, straightforward, expression, while the latter smacks of arrogance and self-absorption. At Bookforum, Jesse Barron writes about the oddity of Working on My Novel, a collection of retweets (you read that correctly) of writers telling the world about their labors. It might also be a good time to read Dominic Smith on the number of novelists at work in America. (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)
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Just Being Honest
Can I be honest with you for a minute here? These colloquially updated Bible passages at The Toast are pretty funny. You could also read a brief history of colloquial titles.
The Epic Continues
Discovery of the Week: Researchers in Iraq have found twenty new lines from the Epic of Gilgamesh after recovering old tablets from smugglers.
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A Letter from a Friend
Recommended Reading: Orrin Devinsky remembers his best friend, Oliver Sacks.
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Walt Whitman Documents Now Available
A scholar who has uncovered Walt Whitman‘s handwritten documents announced his findings Tuesday at the National Archives. These documents are from Whitman‘s time as a government worker, concerning civil rights, war crimes, treason, and western expansion. View the documents here.