November 2011
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Eliot and Dostoevsky
“Eliot and Dostoevsky were nearly exact contemporaries. Born within two years of each other, they died less than two months apart, Eliot in 1880, Dostoevsky in 1881. For both of them, the period from 1860 to 1880 marked their most…
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China’s New Form of Publishing
“Here in China, nearly 195 million people are hooked on a kind of literature that is virtually unknown in the West, but that is rapidly transforming its authors and a new breed of online media companies into the publishing stars…
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Bartleby in NYC
Some friends of Housing Works Bookstore are hosting a marathon reading of Herman Melville’s novella Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. It’s only 45 pages, but it’s an exciting 45 pages. The reading will be this Thursday, Nov. 10, at 3…
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Literary Almost Deaths
What if J.K. Rowling had killed off Ron Weasley, or Melville had killed of Starbuck, or Fitzgerald had killed off Daisy Buchanan? The Awl explores characters who nearly died in their author’s rough draft, giving us an illustrated glimpse of…
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Tattooed Science
Carl Zimmer’s Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed reveals the crossroads between the sciences and tattoo culture. The result is “a weird and wonderful almanac of the lovable geek who immortalized passion for science on their living flesh,” according…
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Debutantes in Distress
Lori Baker’s new short story collection, Crash and Tell, is led by a cast of women whose rich creative minds derail their own lives.
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Patti Smith’s Photographs
“Herman Hesse’s typewriter, Bolaño’s chair, Smith’s father’s favourite cup, Virginia Woolf’s cane and bed. It is as if she were furnishing a home with these photographs for the ghosts of her favorite lives.” The recently opened Patti Smith: Camera Solo…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
I never realized how lacking my life was in upside down flying rhinos. If any one is wondering what to get me for Christmas this year, might I suggest one of the robots of Wu Yulu. I hope you’re all…
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Why Occupy Wall Street Has Already Won: A Poet’s Report from the Trenches
The demands on Occupy Wall Street far outnumber the demands by Occupy Wall Street — because occupiers don’t demand, they exist and they triumph by using their existence to overwrite the host. But unlike an invading army, we don’t have…
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Love and Shame and Love Review
“Instead of a sustained narrative, hundreds of snapshots from Alexander’s past are pieced together—though ‘snapshots’ suggests something static, and each of these eye-blink vignettes is animated by yearning and often by cries of desire or despair.” The Wall Street Journal…
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Occupy Wall Street Roundup
Majority of protesters are not Republicans, nor are they Democrats: “70 percent of Occupy Wall Streeters label themselves ‘independent.’” There are also more children now, and they are there to learn. Occupy Wall Street, the coloring book. Mother Jones answers…