November 28, 2012 Bulletin Poe House Vandalized By Sadie Stein It seems like every week there’s a new indignity, whether it’s the destruction of the church where the Brontës worshipped, the theft of George Eliot’s desk, or, now, the vandalism of the house where Edgar Allan Poe lived and worked in the 1830s. For the second year in a row, the City of Baltimore has chosen not to grant the Poe House its $85,000 subsidy; as a result, despite efforts of supporters and friends, it may have to close permanently. In any event, the museum has been shuttered since September, and as such left more open to destruction; the front stairs have been stolen and graffiti painted on the door. Nothing that can’t be fixed, but we expected more respect from the officials of the only American city to name its football team after a literary allusion.
November 27, 2012 Bulletin Your Holiday Gift Dilemma: Solved! By The Paris Review Just in time for the holidays! Give the gift of The Paris Review to yourself and a loved one! For a limited time, when you buy a one-year subscription with automatic renewal, you can give a one-year gift subscription for only $25. Here’s how it works: Include the addresses for the gift subscriptions in the “notes” field when checking out. Each subscription will start with the Winter issue and, of course, includes access to The Paris Review digital edition. Need more than two gift subscriptions? Just call 866 354 0212 to cover everyone on your list. Offer available for U.S. addresses only. Gift subscriptions will not be automatically renewed.
November 26, 2012 Bulletin What We’re Doing: Double-Bind Tuesday! By Lorin Stein As we have now and then had occasion to point out, Daily editor Sadie Stein and I are not married. Nor is either one of us a parent. But that won’t stop us from competing for your love. Tomorrow at seven: Join Sadie and Doree Shafrir at KGB Bar for an evening of true-life storytelling. OR Join me at 192 Books for a live interview with the poet and novelist Ben Lerner, author of Leaving the Atocha Station. You can’t do both, but we hope you’ll do one! [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
November 20, 2012 Bulletin The Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2012: Shortlist By Sadie Stein The Literary Review has released the shortlist for the twentieth annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award. The nominees for achievement in terrible sex writing include: The Yips, by Nicola Barker The Adventuress, by Nicholas Coleridge Infrared, by Nancy Huston Rare Earth, by Paul Mason Noughties, by Ben Masters The Quiddity of Will Self, by Sam Mills The Divine Comedy, by Craig Raine Back to Blood, by Tom Wolfe Mr. Wolfe, you will recall, is a previous winner, having taken top honors in 2004 for I Am Charlotte Simmons. He was deemed eligible for this year’s awards by dint of passages like the following: But then the tips of her breasts became erect on their own, and the flood in her loins washed morals, despair, and all other abstract assessments away in a cloud of some sort of divine cologne of his. Now his big generative jockey was inside her pelvic saddle, riding, riding, riding, and she was eagerly swallowing it swallowing it swallowing it with the saddle’s own lips and maw—all without a word. Bad, assuredly. But is it bad enough to take the prize? Find out on December 4. Until then, follow the process via @lit_review. (The tweets are tagged as #LRBadSex2012.) And for a glimpse into the judging process, check this out:
November 16, 2012 Bulletin Happy Dagur Islenskrar Tungu! By Sadie Stein Jónas Hallgrímsson. Self-portrait (1845). Pen and ink Today is Icelandic Language Day (literally, “day of the Icelandic tongue”), a festival designed to coincide with the birthday of Jónas Hallgrímsson. As well as an accomplished poet, author, and naturalist, Hallgrímsson was a committed Icelandic nationalist and founder of the journal Fjölnir. He died in 1844 at only thirty-seven, but to this day is considered one of Iceland’s most beloved poets. It is said that Hallgrímsson’s poetry, which dealt often with Iceland, its landscapes, and its people, resists easy translation. Nevertheless, even in the following translation, the themes come through. A Toast to Iceland Our land of lakes forever fair below blue mountain summits, of swans, of salmon leaping where the silver water plummets, of glaciers swelling broad and bare above earth’s fiery sinews — the Lord pour out his largess there as long as earth continues! In 1945, Hallgrímsson was at the center of a rather bizarre controversy. A fan, one Sigurjón Pétursson, spearheaded a campaign to move the poet’s body from Copenhagen, where he died, to his childhood home of Öxnadalur, Iceland. The Icelandic government disagreed: they wanted him reburied at the national burial ground at Þingvellir. Undaunted, Pétursson raised the funds himself, supervised the excavation (which involved digging up four other bodies), and escorted the coffin, defiantly, to Öxnadalur. Once there, however, he couldn’t get any priest to perform the service, and the coffin stood in the church for a week before the government had it moved to Þingvellir, where it was buried and remains to this day. The poet’s legacy, however, is a happier one. Every year, the Jónas Hallgrímsson Award is given to someone who has contributed to the language.
November 15, 2012 Bulletin Louise Erdrich Wins NBA for Fiction By Sadie Stein We’d like to congratulate Louise Erdrich on her National Book Award for The Round House. The following quote, from her Art of Fiction interview, explores the author’s approach to writing: I take great pleasure in writing when I get a real voice going and I’m able to follow the voice and the character. It’s like being in a trance state. Once that had happened a few times, I knew I needed to write for the rest of my life. I began to crave the trance state. I would be able to return to the story anytime, and it would play out in front of me, almost effortlessly. Not many of my stories work out that way. Most of my work is simple persistence … But if the trance happens, even though it’s been wonderful, I’m suspicious. It’s like an ecstatic love affair or fling that makes you think, It can’t be this good, it can’t be! And it never is. I always need to go back and reconfigure parts of the voice. So the control is working with the piece after it’s written, finding the end. The title’s always there, the beginning’s always there, sometimes I have to wait for the middle, and then I always write way past the end and wind up cutting off two pages.