Out this week: Venture of the Infinite Man by Pablo Neruda; Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems; and a new translation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Neruda; Ferlinghetti; Dostoevsky
Scribblenauts
In a digital age, what’s the point of handwriting? It may seem like there isn’t much point to honing one’s penmanship these days. In Hazlitt, Navneet Alang suggests that handwriting, far from being a lost art, is in fact a “useful alchemy” that retains particular uses. You could also read our own Kevin Hartnett on writing by hand.
The Naipaul Test
V.S. Naipaul (seemingly a professional misogynist at times) rankled many by suggesting there are no women writers that can equal him and calling Jane Austen “sentimental.” Now the Guardian offers up a quiz that challenges readers to identify the gender of an author simply by reading a passage of his or her writing.
Wilkinson on Larsen
At the Washington Times, Emily Colette Wilkinson reviews Reif Larsen’s The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet.
The magical realists were right.
It’s raining cats and dogs and spiders and frogs and scarlet worms and fish. No, really. It is.
●
●
The End of Something
Maybe we can’t have it all, says Rachel Shteir at the Chronicle of Higher Education, but can’t women at least have another Feminine Mystique?
●
●
Longshot Magazine
Longshot is an online magazine with quite an interesting concept: “Over a 48 hour period from noon July 29, 2011, through noon July 31, 2011, thousands of writers, editors, artists, photographers, programmers, videographers, and other creatives from all around the world will come together via the Internet to make a magazine from start to finish.” This issue’s theme is “Debt” and you can follow its progress via Tumblr.
●
●
Endless Depths
Every so often, a piece comes along that rends the fragile mind, employing a devil’s portion of mundane details to lay bare the inescapable futility of all human endeavor. This is the only rational way to describe this piece at The Awl, which takes the form of a conversation between Karl Ove Knausgaard and True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto.
●
●