Quick Hits
April 27, 2012
Let’s Translate this Thing: Murathan Mungan’s Cities of Women 12
by Lydia Kiesling
Anglophones have a rare opportunity here for a bit of friendly cultural one-upmanship with the French: In a talk last summer, Mungan told the assembled that his French publishers rejected Cities of Women because they wanted to advertise him strictly as a novelist. The introduction of his stories and plays and poems to the market, they told him, would “confuse” the French people.
April 12, 2012
The Books We Come Back To 57
by Brian Ted Jones
It shows adulthood and devotedness, I think, to try and get back to a book you love, every four seasons or so. So which books do you all reread yearly, or biannually, or quadrennially, or decennially, and why?
April 6, 2012
Even David Foster Wallace Nods 14
by Brian Ted Jones
Where Wallace probably went wrong was in confusing the Greek nomos, meaning “law,” with onoma, meaning “name.”
March 28, 2012
A Previously Unpublished Scene from The Pale King by David Foster Wallace 14
by Editor
Eagle-eyed readers looking at the cover of the soon-to-be-released paperback edition of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King may have noticed the words “With Four Previously Unpublished Scenes.”
March 16, 2012
Innocent and Abroad: Mark Twain and the Art of Travel Writing 1
by Nathan Deuel
In the end, travel books — or personal essays — are doomed. Try to describe the gorilla and you fail. Words are never enough, and most will ultimately be forgotten. And if that gorilla is a man? Maybe better not to have begun at all.
November 10, 2011
Of Fracking and Franzen: Is Strong Motion Coming True in Oklahoma? 12
by Brian Ted Jones
I cannot imagine the circumstances under which I would discover that my actions had caused an earthquake. But I think if I did, my next move would probably be to stop doing whatever it was I was doing — not to figure out a way to live with the earthquakes. Because if energy companies actually believe that fracking causes earthquakes — and if they continue to frack — where does it end?
