Posts by author
Dinah Fay
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Searching for Cervantes
After a Times article last March criticized Spain (and its literary establishment) for failing to unravel the mystery of the precise location of Miguel de Cervantes’s grave, a reinvigorated search may have finally yielded results. Cervantes was buried in Madrid’s…
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Rushdie Goes Medieval
Salman Rushdie, no stranger to controversy, now finds himself under scrutiny from a different sort of institution: the Times Literary Supplement. Michael Caines, writing for TLS, takes issue with Rushdie’s recent use of the word “medieval” in a statement made…
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Ban “Bravery” from Book Jackets
David Ulin at the LA Times makes interesting argument for retiring the word “brave” from jacket copy. Citing its overuse and the seeming dissonance of describing literature as brave in the face of countless acts of bravery in the world beyond…
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Carol Ann Duffy’s First Ladies
In a playful reflection on the work and philosophy of poet Carol Ann Duffy, Jeanette Winterson explores the possibilities for storytelling, feminism, and everyday entertainment through poetry. Winterson excerpts poems from The World’s Wife in the voices of historical better…
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Digitizing Reels of History
The British Library says it has a window of 15 years to preserve an invaluable cache of sound recordings, but unless fundraising can help pick up the pace, the archives could take as many as 48 to complete. The artifacts…
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Objectivism in Action at Texas Schools
Parents in one of the wealthiest towns in Texas are lobbying to get Ayn Rand into schools, and in a classic case of life imitating art (or art being chosen to reflect and enact a desired worldview, perhaps) they intend…
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Hacking Away at Old Saws
In an interview with NPR about his new book, It’s Been Said Before: A Guide to the Use and Abuse of Cliches, Orin Hargraves acknowledges the utility of well-worn shorthand even as he counsels against its use. Clichés work because…
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Goodbye Chestnut, Hello Chatrooms
The Oxford Junior Dictionary takes the forefront this week in the debate over the pedagogy of reference books, as 28 authors join a public campaign to reverse changes that have ousted entries from the natural world in favor of those…
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A Mélange of Loafing and Looking
In Leslie Jamison’s introduction to a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days & Collect, excerpted over at Slate, the word “specimen” is rescued from its isolating, clinical connotations, instead becoming realigned with Whitman’s vision of abundance and celebration. Jamison recounts…
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Literary Criticism Criticism
At The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jeffrey J. Williams takes on the question of the role of literary criticism, both historically and in the current moment. In a world where big data is king, criticism has increasingly moved away from radical…
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A Nobel Refusal
Jean-Paul Sartre became the only Nobel literature laureate to voluntarily decline the honor in 1964, but as newly released archives from the Swedish Academy reveal, it was at least partially due to a failure in correspondence. Sartre wrote to the…
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Banish the Bae
No one holds a monopoly on cranky admonishments of popular parlance, but Lake Superior State University’s annual “List of Banished Words” does hold the distinction of admonishing longest. The 40th year’s list is now out, featuring words in the “get…