“She gathered books to display for attendees and discovered that inside the cover of one, ‘The Koran for Dummies,’ someone had written “lies cover to cover,” drawn a swastika and made a disparaging remark about the Prophet Muhammad.” The president of the American Library Association reports “startling increases” in 2016 of vandalism, including hateful messages, at libraries. The Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has begun formally tracking such incidents to determine whether the increase is “a blip or a trend.”
No Bastion for Books
The British Library Goes Digital
The British Library is launching a new iPad app that will eventually feature over 60,000 19th century books.
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The Amazing Production of Kavalier & Clay
Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre has adapted all 636 pages of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay for the stage.
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Boston Writers
Recommended Reading: Tim Ellison writes for Ploughshares on Boston’s founding literary figures. Pair with Adam Kelly’s Millions essay on Boston’s geography in Infinite Jest.
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The Writer’s Mimicry
“When is it plagiarism, when is it homage? Especially in creative writing, I get tripped up on this distinction. A trick for writer’s block: write an imitation, steal moves, learn by mimicry. For my own poem-writing, I turn to other texts all the time. I pull language, take a word I like, sometimes fragments of phrases and twist them. I get inspired, I want to model after poems I fell madly for.” On discovering another writer’s plagiarism.
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