A Mississippi school district has decided to pull Harper Lee‘s To Kill a Mockingbird from its junior-high reading list because it “makes people uncomfortable.” The novel, which frequently tops the American Library Association’s “Frequently Challenged Book” list, tackles racism. See also: an essay on the symbolism of mockingbirds.
‘Mockingbird’ Removed from Reading List
“a video a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s”
Open Culture dug up the only known recordings of James Joyce reading his own work. Maybe Finnegans Wake will make a bit more sense to you when you hear its thunderwords spoken out loud.
A Bookstore of Common Prayer
Common dreams, common bookstores: “I went home with…the BookWoman bumper sticker, which reads: ‘Support Your Feminist Bookstore — She Supports You.'”
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George Eliot, Translator of Human Emotions
For the first time in more than a century, a new edition of George Eliot's translation of Spinoza's magnum opus, Ethics, will be made available.
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Unpredictable Lit
“These people may not take you seriously. And your boss might not either. Or your dentist or your best friend from middle school. But you who does take you seriously? Dictators. Dictators take you very seriously. Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Augusto Pinochet, all rounded up writers and artists in short order. They could not afford to have the unpredictability of literature at large while they were trying to create a totalitarian state.” Wendy Willis on subversion through writing for The Rumpus.
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On Translating Robert Walser
The Quarterly Conversation interviews Susan Bernofsky, gifted translator of Robert Walser (whose Microscripts are due out this month.)
First Look at Gone Girl
Amy barely speaks in the trailer for Gone Girl, but she is present in almost every frame. The first look at David Fincher’s adaptation features a creepy cover of “She” and a harried Ben Affleck as he goes from bereaved husband to suspect. The film will be in theaters on October 3, but until then, read our conversation about Gillian Flynn.
Braving the Bestsellers
Canonical literature isn’t the only way to learn about America. The bestseller list can be equally as telling. Matthew Kahn is reading 100 years of No. 1 bestsellers from 1913 to 2013. He blogs about the books and discusses the project in an interview with Salon’s Laura Miller. When Miller asks what makes a bestseller, he claims, “A lot of it is just a matter of accessibility. A focus on plot and character rather than structure and the prose itself.”
Plagiarizing James Bond
Little, Brown & Company has pulled a mystery novel from the shelves after passages in the book were found to have been plagiarized from “a variety of classic and contemporary spy novels,” like James Bond novels and books by Robert Ludlum and Charles McCarry.