An end-of-the-month round-up of links that lead to interesting things happening in the world of literature and pop culture.
- “The meaning of words, and the way we used them, change all the time — and that’s OK with linguist John McWhorter of Columbia University. He writes about how the English language has evolved in his new book, Words on the Move: Why English Won’t — And Can’t — Sit Still (Like Literally).” |
“Our Language Has ‘Interesting Little Wrinkles,’ Linguist Says” via NPR
- “But, inherently, Springsteen is a brooder: a serious, unglib man given to puzzling out the mixed-up thoughts in his head. In other words, a born memoirist.” |
Vanity Fair on Bruce Springsteen (“For 50 years, the rock icon has turned his struggle into songs, his unrest into performance. Today, as he wraps up a top-selling tour and publishes a 500-page memoir, he is coming to terms with life out on the wire.”) You can now place a hold on Springsteen’s forthcoming memoir, Born to Run.
- “Reading fiction requires that we let go of the world we know and allow ourselves to be suspended in a universe not of our making, where we do not know the rules, and (usually) cannot anticipate the outcome. Which is to say, when reading fiction, we must exist, like the writer who created it, in a prolonged state of not knowing. This capacity, which Keats famously called negative capability, seems to diminish as we age—or perhaps only our willingness does. Possibly one reason so many Americans read fiction when on vacation is that, having abandoned the world we know, we’ve already begun the process of separating from ourselves.” |
Stephanie Grant, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation: With Ferrante and Knausgaard“
- “I’ve never before had the same main character appear in consecutive novels, but I liked Yancy and his attitude, and I was curious to see what would happen to him after Bad Monkey.” |
Carl Hiaasen answers questions about his new novel, Razor Girl.
- “Donoghue, a writer of great vitality and generosity—one gets the sense that she would gladly have her characters over for dinner, as long as they’d agree to eat—has been drawn repeatedly to the genre of historical fiction not so much to inhabit or reinterpret the past as to try to fit together its overlooked, missing pieces.” |
From The New Yorker: “Emma Donoghue’s Art of Starvation” on her new book, The Wonder.
- “With summer’s blockbuster bombast finally fading along with the August heat, we once again find ourselves drifting into a cinematic fall season marked by more thought-provoking and idiosyncratic visions. Yes, among the late-year offerings there are a handful of big-budget franchise hopefuls, but the full list of upcoming movies represents a broad array of attractive treats for the literarily inclined cineaste.” |
A breakdown of fall films adapted from a novel.
