February 5, 2013 On the Shelf Literary NFL, and Other News By Sadie Stein “The Ravens’ lack of interest thus far in supporting the city’s literary legacy is a travesty.” The Super Bowl doesn’t help Poe! “Ladies and gentlemen, your Literary National Football League.” (And more!) Speaking of (sort of) fictional characters inspired by real people… Doodling and Neuroscience 101. Half of this sounds doable. “Anthony Trollope, before he set off for his job at the GPO every day, would write three thousand words between 5:30 and 8:30 A. M.. He kept his watch in front of him so he could achieve two hundred fifty words each quarter-hour. If he finished one novel before 8:30, he would instantly start the next one.” Don’t worry: not all writers’ word-counts are this demoralizing inspiring.
February 4, 2013 On the Shelf Dr. Seuss’s Hats, and Other News By Sadie Stein “In Plath’s case, her writing began, soon after her death, to be relegated to a supporting role in a seductive, but intensely misleading, narrative of victimhood.” How to give the poet her due. Are these the fifty key moments in English literature? Discuss. The strange mystery of who firebombed London’s oldest anarchist bookshop, Freedom Books. “Believe me, when you get a dozen people seated at a fairly formal dinner party, and they’ve all got on perfectly ridiculous chapeaus, the evening takes care of itself.” A display of Dr. Seuss’s hats is going up at the New York Public Library. Related: Jon Stewart gets Seussical.
February 1, 2013 On the Shelf Nabokov Museum Vandalized, and Other News By Sadie Stein “The common core state standards, a set of math and English goals agreed upon by forty-five states and now being implemented, sends cursive the way of the quill pen, while requiring instead that students be proficient in keyboarding by fourth grade.” Libraries have gone raucous! Bring back the shush! The Nabokov Museum has been vandalized by the so-called St. Petersburg Cossacks. Why? For “promoting pedophilia.” Perfumes inspired by dead writers. In the UK, doctors will soon be allowed to prescribe books.
January 31, 2013 On the Shelf Courier Font Is Improved, and Other News By Sadie Stein Paavo Anselm Alexis Hollo, a prolific and accomplished poet, critic, and translator, has died at seventy-eight. J. D. Salinger once wrote a biographer that he had “borne all the exploitation and loss of privacy I can possibly bear in a single lifetime.” Luckily for him, he won’t be around for the upcoming biography by David Shields and Shane Salerno, released by Simon & Schuster in September. Courier font has been perfected. Meet Courier Prime, if you dare. Robert Silvers, at lunch with the FT, talks editing, Zadie, and keeping the Pentagon Papers at the NYRB offices. “It became clear that we were building a utopian alternate-universe bestseller list—a syllabus for readers who are curious about the best transgressive, funny, gripping memoir and fiction written by every kind of person other than heterosexual men.” On the founding of Emily Books.
January 30, 2013 On the Shelf Chatterley Sex Advice, and Other News By Sadie Stein In today’s adaptation news, Campbell Scott will be helming Didion’s Book of Common Prayer. Remember these words: sub-compact publishing. You are witnessing the future. Not ready for the future? Here’s Virginia Woolf’s bread recipe! Ten things not to say after sex, according to Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Finnegans Wake is selling like gangbusters in China.
January 29, 2013 On the Shelf O Tempora! And Other News By Sadie Stein If you’re not Pride and Prejudiced out, here’s a playlist. (We think it should end with “Chapel of Love,” but that’s a matter of opinion.) Barnes & Noble will be downsizing, closing twenty stores a year for the next ten years. (Did you know they had that many stores?) In related news, the Globe and Mail is, depressingly, slashing its books section. That’s right: “Slashing.” At least the word puberty is no longer censored! Judy Blume on the bad times. It would seem that Harry Potter, like the Bible, can be used to support any argument.