At the Paris Review, Lucy Scholes takes a closer look at the early novels of Edith Templeton, in which inflexible matriarchal figures are cast against society’s expectations. “In a society in which impressions are critical, nothing is ever quite as it seems; in Templeton’s novels, a polished exterior inevitably obscures a grubbier truth,” Scholes writes. “These are ostensibly novels of manners, but as the English novelist Anita Brookner so astutely observes, ‘they are also something more, for running beneath the social comedy, so beautifully conducted by all the principal players, there lie acts of madness, of revenge, and of revolt.’ Yet through it all, good etiquette prevails; neither comedy nor tragedy shakes the composure of Templeton’s characters—nor the controlled elegance of her own prose.”
Lucy Scholes on the Controlled Elegance of Edith Templeton
Harry Potter and the Teflon Cloak
We’ve been jealous of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak since The Sorcerer’s Stone. Now scientists can make an invisibility cloak in 15 minutes with Teflon. We’ll never get our Hogwarts acceptance letter, but this is pretty close.
Critterati
Happy Halloween! At the New Yorker, the winners of the dress your pet as a literary character contest. Don’t miss the honorable mentions (I’m partial to the feline Moby Dick).
A Holiday with Strangers
Another holiday, another Jon Cotner holiday slideshow. Here he and his wife took to the streets of New York City and “asked 25 strangers to tell [them] their holiday wish.” (Previously.)
The Adventures of Getting Rich Quick
“[Mark] Twain wasn’t above the contrivances of capitalism, even as he skewered them. . . From nonage to dotage, in dire straits or in the pink, he was always a capricious entrepreneur, counting the zeroes on an imaginary balance sheet.” The New Yorker writes about the humor writer’s many failed attempts to get very rich. From our archives: Twain and the Wild West.
On Tour
Noah Charney writes for The Atlantic in defense of book tours, which “mostly entail maneuvering to get on radio shows or TV programs, and less glamorous elements, like attending bookstore readings where hardly anyone shows up.”
The Best Episode of Science Friday Ever?
Public radio program Science Friday has quite a lineup on tap this week: “Science and art often seem to develop in separate silos, but many thinkers are inspired by both. Novelist Cormac McCarthy, filmmaker Werner Herzog, and physicist Lawrence Krauss discuss science as inspiration for art and Herzog’s new film on the earliest known cave paintings.” (via @maudnewton)