“I am writing a book my father will never see. Not in its entirety, not out in the world.” For Longreads, Nicole Chung writes about adoption, family, writing, and finishing her upcoming memoir, All You Can Ever Know, in the wake of her father’s sudden death. Pair with: Julie Buntin‘s Year in Reading entry which feature’s Chung’s memoir.
All She Can Ever Know
‘The Joy Luck Club’ Turns 25
On the 25th anniversary of the publication of The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan looks back on the landmark novel and its subsequent film adaptation.
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“Writers all need Vera.”
Does a writer need a devoted spouse to be prolific? At The Atlantic, Koa Beck examines the concept of having a do-it-all partner like Vera Nabokov and if this traditional gender role only harms female writers. Koa interviews various writers, from Emma Straub to Ayelet Waldman, on how their literary partnerships work. “I’d fantasized that being his Vera was a way for me to deal with being stuck as a stay-at-home mom—I’d subsume my own ambitions into something ‘greater!’ But that lasted about 48 hours,” Waldman said.
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Invisible Translators
“One is less likely to overlook or be unfairly harsh to a translator if one has been a translator, and one is less likely to fault an original writer for weaknesses in translated prose or poetry if one has a sense of the pitfalls into which a translator can stumble—a sense I am still developing after years of translating poetry and prose.” Over at Asymptote Journal, Sue Burke and Maia Evrona look at reviews of books in translation.
Dark Times at The Virginia Quarterly
At The Wilmington Star News, a round-up of the news coverage of the suicide of The Virginia Quarterly Review‘s managing editor, Kevin Morrissey, and the accusations that Morrissey’s boss, Ted Genoways, the wunderkind editor-in-chief of VQR, may have played a role in the suicide. In the wake of this sad controversy, the University of Virginia has shut down the 85-year-old journal, pending an internal investigation.
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“Filthier”
Every year, like clockwork, a few brave administrators ban a classic book in time for the opprobrium of Banned Books Week. This year, the brave administrators in question work in Randolph County, NC, where Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison will no longer be on the curriculum. Why? Real quote: it’s a “hard read.” (Related: Kelsey McKinney on banning The Bluest Eye.)
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Football Fiction
Recommended Listening: Michael Nye reading his new short story about a former NFL lineman, “Beauty in the Age of Chaos and Savagery,” for The Kenyon Review. For more Nye, read his 2013 Year in Reading post.
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Who Pays Blogs
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