Category: words

These books and classes seem to ask an underlying question: Is what the world is experiencing today a replay of the Nazis and Italian Fascists? Probably not. But the parallels these writers see are difficult to deny. Even Francis Fukuyama’s latest books have re-examined democracy in our current age. – Los Angeles Times

A study from Canada reveals undergraduates consider language learning to be a feminine pursuit, and that men with traditional beliefs about the proper roles of men and women report less interest in such study if their masculinity has been threatened. – Pacific Standard

“John Gardner, the literary critic, wrote that the job of the novelist is to create a ‘vivid and continuous dream’ for the reader, but I’d somehow developed a case of readerly sleep apnea. I’d gotten into the habit of consuming novels so fitfully that I was all but sealed off from their pleasures. It was as if I’d been watching movies in a special buffering-only mode, or listening to music through the world’s balkiest Bluetooth headphones. This style of reading had, I realized, shunted me into a vicious circle.” – The New York Times

Hoang’s first novel, The Kiss Quotient, had an autistic main character – and so does her second. She says, “There was this website I looked at — I don’t want to tell you what it is, because I don’t want to drive traffic there — but it, basically they say that autistic people are heartless, and that we don’t experience empathy, we are selfish and cold, and anyone who’s had a relationship could go on there and kind of air their grievances and say how horrible it was. And I’m sure that those situations exist, but I can’t accept that that’s a rule.” Hence, her wildly popular romances. – NPR

What a heartbreak her life was after To Kill a Mockingbird, and her attempted true-crime book turned out similarly: “Despite amassing more than enough Maxwelliana for a book, she could not get traction in the prose. That’s a common enough problem, of course; nothing writes itself, and no matter how many pages a reporting trip yields, the one that matters most always starts out blank. Everyone told Lee that the story she had found was destined to be a brilliant book. But no one could tell her how to write it.” – The Guardian (UK)

Poet Imtiaz Dharker had been tipped by several British news sources as the next poet laureate, following Carol Ann Duffy, but she said no: “I had to weigh the privacy I need to write poems against the demands of a public role. The poems won.” – The Guardian (UK)

Carmichael’s is the oldest independent bookstore in the city, and the founders just passed over the reins to their daughter and niece. How do you “modernize” a bookstore – or do you? – The New York Times

Bret Easton Ellis grants that almost no house would publish American Psycho today (he wouldn’t even want to write it today), and it’s hard to imagine any American publisher releasing Lolita in 2019 if it weren’t already famous. “[Yet] if Lolita is a scandalous novel about child abuse, why are A Little Life and My Absolute Darling, which are much more graphic, so much less so? Times have changed since 1955, of course, but the idea of the novel’s purpose has changed too.” – The Guardian

As Sarah Malley discovered while working at an independent bookshop, some routine practices legally qualified at least in her state) as wage theft. And it’s far more common for indie bookstore employees to skip vacation and sick days because they can’t afford to take them. “Does a business that can’t afford to pay its employees a living wage deserve to be in business? … I have no idea. I haven’t the faintest idea at all.” – Popula