Literature Today: A Link Dump Like No Other

Some regular readers who don't regularly read the Valve asked why I'm not x-posting my literary link dumps.  Since I couldn't muster much of a response, I caved.  (Don't worry, I have another post planned for the evening, and it is something else, I tell you, something else.)

I.

Thanks to the passage of time, terrorism is now an acceptable novelistic subject.  Just don’t make it Middle Eastern terrorism, because according to Brad Thor, “We’re getting Islamic terrorist fatigue.”

Harper Lee, 80, returns to the public eye old: “[In] an abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.”

Film novelization is a dying art, and that’s a shame, because “Quadrophenia [was] surprisingly good.”

Realism must embrace fundamentalism or risk losing its license.

The remains Sophia, Nathaniel and Una Hawthorne all repose now in Concord. “It’s very emotional,” explains Imogen Howe, “They know now in spirit that everyone is reunited.” Being dead, Sophia, Nathaniel and Una were unavailable for comment.

Few in Macondo Aracataca care about Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.  Or they’re unpersuaded that a town he hasn’t visited in 20 years can bank on his name.

Finally, the announcement of my new project, an attempt to create an abstract database for literary scholars. 

II.

This week on Bill Moyer’s Faith & Reason: Salman Rushdie.  (Check local listings.) Future episodes to include Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Mary Gordon, David Grossman, Colin McGinn, Richard Rodriguez, Anne Provoost, Will Power and Jeanette Winterson.

Complaints against clumsy literary erotica mount. 

David Morrell, Canadian author of First Blood and holder of a Ph.D. in American Literature from Penn State, won the 2005 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel for Creepers.  (Stephen King thinks him “chilling and hypnotically readable.”  Frank Gado, reviewing John Barth: An Introduction, disagrees.)

Malawi must seek beyond its borders for quality literature, says MacMillan’s Constantine Simwaka: “Most Malawians are not creative enough to produce works that may attract the youth to read more.”

Publishers are determined to bring bling to literature. “Mental Case,” whose real name is Sal Dizzal, attributes the genre’s anticipated success to the fact that “People like to hear and read about where they come from, and the public [in general] wants to hear the gangster folklore.”

Harry Potter is the source of Latin mania across the UK.  If you enjoyed that story, you may also find “violence“ and “changes to waste disposal“ of interest.

From beyond the grave, Chesteron continues to win converts.

III.

Time magazine demands answers, slackers: “Who is the Voice of Your Generation?”  Has he or she been unjustly neglected?

An impoverished idiot complains about literary theory’s infiltration of the Fed.

From literary theory to Critical Race Theory, yet she still likes T.S. Eliot.

Homer is a woman, maybe:

The idea of a woman writing The Iliad and not being bored out of her mind by the endless fighting and killings is a bit more far-fetched.

Gender essentialism?  Pinker explains.

From the MFA Blog, news that The Paris Review has put all its interviews with writers online.

Blawgs win.

The government doles out $691,000 and discovers that “mindless reading” or “zoning out” impairs reading comprehension.

Wait, what?

Comments

[Simmy]

I do believe that spending $691,000 for such a study will lead to this

[noah cicero]

That thing about books talking about faith. The best two books on faith I've ever read are Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis, and Simone De Beauvoir's When things of the Spirit Come First.