Is it possible to figure out Shakespeare’s politics from his plays? At the very least, there’s a lot we can learn.
The People Hath Spoken
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Rowling: Billionaire, Petty Criminal, Both?
J.K Rowling is a vandal! The billionaire and author of the Harry Potter series left her mark in an Edinburgh hotel room when she scribbled some graffiti on the back of a decorative bust back in 2007. “J.K. Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room on 11 Jan 2007,” it reads. Oh, I suppose that’s okay.
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Why so Serious?
Jonathan Lethem thinks his work is taken too seriously. “Well, I was just watching Richard Pryor, and he says, ‘When you’re dating a white woman, and people don’t like it, you can’t really pretend. You can’t go, “Oh, she’s not with me.”‘ ‘You write the big, ambitious books, right?’ Well, I guess they are,” he said in an interview with Salon. He also discusses being equated with Jonathan Franzen and his new novel, Dissident Gardens.
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Electric Literature’s Latest Project
Electric Literature just launched a new experiment with Israeli writer Alex Epstein. Epstein published his latest collection of “micro-fiction” for free on Facebook, and he wrote about the experiment on the Electric Literature blog. For the next week, Electric Literature will be publishing a sample of translations from his collection on their Facebook page.
Wilson!
A rare example of a sporting good/movie memorabilia crossover. I want one (as a friend)
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Tuesday Means New Releases
Two hotly anticipate works by literary masters hit shelves this week. Both were “most anticipated books.” We have The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood and Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro. The latter was written about persuasively by Lydia in recent weeks.
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Blocked
“Trump has blocked me from reading his tweets. I may have to kill myself.” Stephen King responds to news that the U.S. President doesn’t want the author reading his Twitter account. Luckily, reports Entertainment Weekly, J.K. Rowling has stepped in, offering to DM King anything he misses (these are all sentences we regret having to write, fyi). See also: Elizabeth Minkel‘s consideration of Rowling’s second narrative thoughts.
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