The Washington Post reports that Spanish writer and Cervantes Prize winner Juan Goytisolo has died at age 86. Bruna Dantas Lobato wrote about Goytisolo’s 1970 novel of dispossession Count Julian for us, noting that “[j]ust like the nature of exile itself, the narrative offers no relief, no place of rest: just fragment after fragment of dry landscapes, lonely characters, and rooms in disarray.”
Juan Goytisolo: 1931-2017
Bad News/Good News
N+1 – we repeat – is not putting its archives online, as we surmised from a too-quick perusal of its new website. (We regret the error. Post in haste, repent at leisure.) But it might, for $75,000.
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Early Chaucer Manuscript Put Online for All to See
The “Hengwrt Chaucher,” one of the most significant early manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, has been put online for the entire world to see thanks to the efforts of the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.
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Tastemaker
How do you make the jump from editing a food magazine to writing novels? It’s a tricky change to make, but Ruth Reichl did it, as she explains to Marnie Hanel in an interview in the Times. (Her first novel came out last week.)
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Global Fame for a Literary Icon
“She told the students not to explain too much, that they could throw in expressions in Igbo or Yoruba or pidgin and trust the reader to get it. She told them that even if a story was autobiographical it should be shaped—that, for instance, although in life you could have ten close friends, in fiction you could not, because it was too confusing. She told them to avoid inflated language—’never purchase when you can buy.'” A delightful (and somewhat rare) long profile of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the New Yorker.
Movie Poster Marketing Philosophy
Have you ever wondered why so many movie posters employ the “tilting horizon” effect? One marketer is here to explain why. Now, if only someone could explain why no movie posters are original anymore…
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Voracious Reading
Are you the type of reader who craves the food described in novels like our own Nick Moran? Then take The Guardian’s “Food in fiction” quiz. Sample question: “According to the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, what kind of food is eaten tomorrow, yesterday, but never today?”
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The Rise of Annotated Literature
Recommended Reading: On how Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice paved the way for the modern trend of literary annotation.
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Recommended Reading from Roxane Gay
Book Riot has compiled a list of Roxane Gay’s recommended reads via Twitter. Some of her choices include Citizen by Claudia Rankine, God Help the Child by Toni Morrison, and City on Fire by our own Garth Risk Hallberg. See more books Gay recommends in our Year in Reading column.
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