A Weeping Tree of His Own: Yasunari Kawabata’s Dandelions
Blindness as a concept is central to Kawabata’s novel, where every character is blind to something.
...more
Posts Tagged: Nobel laureate
Selma Lagerlöf, an Exception to the Rule
Since the the first Nobel Prize was awarded, Cassie Gonzales explains in “An Unconventional Nobel Laureate” at the Ploughshares blog, the Laureate winner list has not been a bastion of diversity. However, Selma Lagerlöf was an exception—in her brief, funny essay, Gonzalez explains how a “disabled, Swedish, cross-genre, lady-loving author” bucked the white male (and heterosexual and able-bodied) […]
...moreA Woman of the Ear
If Flaubert was ‘a man of the quill,’ then perhaps I am ‘a woman of the ear.’ My interviews aren’t interviews as such. Just talks. We just talk and my role is to listen. Listening was difficult at first because of the cognitive dissonance I experienced. All that we’d believed in. Over at The Millions, […]
...moreWeekend Rumpus Roundup
Having a social life on weekends is fun, but what if you missed our killer Rumpus weekend features?! No worries, we’ve collected them for you here. On Saturday, Shawn Andrew Mitchell reviewed Dark Lies the Island by recent Rumpus interviewee Kevin Barry: In one paragraph a poet-narrator might describe how “the sky had shucked the last […]
...moreDear Wislawa
We could all use a little guidance down the artist’s path now and then, and today’s helping hand comes from essential Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska. The Poetry Foundation gathered some of her greatest hits from the poetry advice column she used to write for Polish litmag Życie Literackie (Literary Life). Here’s one to get you […]
...moreWriters Sign Petition Against Mass Surveillance
A whole raft of writers, from Margaret Atwood to Arundhati Roy to Orhan Pamuk, have joined forces to take a stand against mass surveillance in the digital age. A petition put together by Writers Against Mass Surveillance was signed by 562 authors (including five Nobel laureates) from 80 countries and circulated in newspapers worldwide on […]
...moreRIP Doris Lessing
Nobel Prize–winning author Doris Lessing passed away in her London home at the age of 94. The 11th woman to ever win the Nobel, Lessing broke ground with both the form and the content of books like The Golden Notebook, Children of Violence, and The Good Terrorist. Her New York Times obituary calls her “uninhibited and outspoken” (and “cavalier […]
...moreAlice Munro Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
Alice Munro, a “master of the contemporary short story,” has been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in literature. The first Canadian to win, Munro told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: I think my stories have gotten around quite remarkably for short stories, and I would really hope that this would make people see the short story […]
...moreTriumph and Oblivion
José Saramago’s posthumous novel The Elephant’s Journey is an exploration of the self—and a gift to his readers.
...more