Posts by author
Dinah Fay
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Tranströmer in Memoriam
Tomas Tranströmer, the beloved Swedish poet and Nobel laureate, has passed away at age 83. Tranströmer was notable for the economy of his work, its quiet optimism, and the insights it brought from the poet’s long career as an industrial…
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How to Harlequin
Over at Jezebel, Kelly Faircloth shares a fantastic long form piece on the rise of the Harlequin romance novel, and how the brand became synonymous with a wildly lucrative if critically dismissed genre. From the original formula for woman-centered, alpha-male…
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Finally, a Seuss Museum
The world’s first museum dedicated to the life and work of Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, is set to open in his hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts as soon as 2016. The venture will be a welcome addition to the museum…
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A New Read on Bishop
For a poet as anthologized as Elizabeth Bishop, it’s fair to say there’s a certain lack of serious criticism—or perhaps, critics thinking seriously—about her work, compared to the Modernists against whose influence she was writing. Eavan Boland reviews a new…
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Bolaño Hits the Jackpot
What kind of fantastic twist of fate would it take to instantly finance an epic stage production of a thousand-page Bolaño novel? As it turns out, it only took a retired stage manager turned monk winning a 153 million dollar…
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Toni Morrison, Resplendent Orchid
Toni Morrison was honored at this year’s National Book Critics Circle award ceremony, and Rita Dove’s remarks capture Morrison’s ongoing legacy beautifully. Dove describes her own joy in discovering The Bluest Eye, the first book in the University of Iowa’s…
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Keep Warburg Weird
The future of the Warburg Institute, one of London’s most influential and strangest libraries, is examined at length in this week’s New Yorker. Adam Gopnik covers the history of the center, from its founding in pre-Nazi Germany through the height…
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Diverse Books by the Numbers
Over at FiveThirtyEight, Amy Rothschild explores the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, and the many strategies advocates are using to make a lasting change in the landscape of children’s literature. While 2014 showed a hopeful bump in books penned by and depicting people…
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Spike in Sales for Communist Manifesto
Penguin’s recently released Little Black Classics series, a bargain-priced celebration of 80 years in the paperback trade, is bringing classic authors back into high demand. Karl Marx leads the pack, with the 64-page Communist Manifesto priced at a proletariat-friendly 80p.…
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Trollope Unabridged
A restored version of Anthony Trollope’s The Duke’s Children, reinstating 65,000 words cut from the novel for its original publication, will celebrate the writer’s 200th birthday. The precise impetus for the cut is unknown, but researchers agree it was likely a…
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Keeping Faulkner on a Short Leash
The roguish, hard-drinking novelist is a beloved American archetype, but one the State Department took extra care to control as an international ambassador, according to recently released documents on William Faulkner. Since the author couldn’t be counted on to responsibly…
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Novelist Brings Slavery to California
In an interview with NPR, novelist and funnyman Paul Beatty discusses his novel The Sellout, and what’s on his mind when creating a world where plantation culture is reborn in California. The novel focuses on Bonbon, an African American man…