ARMADEEP SINGH: I was recently in cool Vancouver to give a talk at a conference on
Modern Punjabi Literature. The conference was at the University of British Columbia, and it was hosted by the Asian Studies department (which has a strong program in Punjabi language instruction, part of which includes the study of literature).
THE MILLIONS: Is there a
"crisis in reading?" Last quarter's Barnes & Noble
conference call; the well-publicized demise of certain
book review supplements and
independent bookstores;
SLUSHPILE: Getting books signed is a strange phenomenon. As an aspiring author, I think writers should be willing to sign damn near anything...
A PROGRESSIVE ON THE PRAIRIE: I’ll admit
Nazi Literature, first published in Spanish in 1996, shows Bolaño had both a stunning imagination and fine prose skills. It is a collection of biographical sketches of fictional fascist writers in North, Central and South America. And while Nazis and neo-Nazis appear (some still alive in this literary world), the emphasis here is not necessarily on Hitler’s world view but a general ultra-right, fascist view of society.
RICK LIBRARIAN: Imagine that you live in the Netherlands in 1940. The German Army has invaded your country and taken over your government. At first, the spokesmen for the new regime promise that you will be able to continue with your life as it has been for your ancestry is the same as theirs.
CONFESSIONS OF AN IDIOSYNCRATIC MIND: The
LA Times Festival of Books is done. I have a godawful early wake-up call for my flight back to New York tomorrow and about a day or so to recover before Edgar Week is in full swing. So the short version of this weekend was:
- Fabulous. Can't wait to come back next year because bar none, it's the best book festival I've been to for reasons already explained yesterday...
THE NEW YORKER: In 1904, a French photographer documented the Chinese practice of lingchi, a form of execution that involved slicing off limbs and pieces of flesh. Europeans recoiled from what appeared to be a gruesome, lingering death, citing it as evidence of a uniquely Oriental ruthlessness. This fascinating study argues, however, that . . .
Source: THE NEW YORKER
THE NEW YORKER: Unlike many novelists before and after him, William Faulkner didn’t particularly yearn to work in the theatre. Perhaps his experiences as a screenwriter satisfied whatever theatrical bug he might have picked up when he ventured beyond the confines of his Oxford, Mississippi, farm. Still, the dramatic form held some interest . . .
THE NEW YORKER: Andrew Sean Greer’s 2004 novel, “The Confessions of Max Tivoli,” quite brilliantly fulfilled the difficult task it set itself--to show
the life of a man born old, who over the decades grows backward into infancy and, finally, nonexistence. This narrative feat had been attempted before, by Scott Fitzgerald and . . .
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Dmitri Nabokov plans to defy the wishes of his father, Vladimir Nabokov, by publishing his father’s final, incomplete novel rather than destroying the manuscript by fire.
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