“Puzzled as to why her mother had not figured out “Miriam” on her own — or why, after Capote became famous, she did not say much about her letter and his answer — Ms. Akers sought clues.” The New York Times writes about recently discovered letter from Truman Capote to a young reader who misunderstood his first published story. Read our own Michael Bourne on the tragedy of Capote’s life.
Dear Reader
Greene Family Biography
Jeremy Lewis introduces his new biography of Graham Greene and his remarkable family, Shades of Greene, for the Telegraph.
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Smile!
“Publishing is also an industry that selectively values a kind of swaggering authenticity that would never capitulate to demands for something so banal as being nice. But authenticity is too often a short hand for callous, aloof, or honest for the purpose of cruelty rather than truth-seeking.” Alana Massey writes about the “niceness” of publishing.
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A Flock of Pages
“Every one of these books is a herd of animals.” The Atlantic reports that a group of archaeologists and geneticists in the UK have used mere crumbs of parchment to study the DNA of several thousand-year-old illuminated manuscripts, the pages of which were made of cow and sheep skins.
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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.