Frankenstein was not her only groundbreaking novel; in 1829, she published The Last Man, depicting England circa 2100 as a post-plague dystopia. “As with Frankenstein, Shelley was playing on some very real anxieties in Industrial Revolution-era society – anxieties that live on to the present day. And, just like with Frankenstein, she got flack for it.”
Category: words
The Onion And Satire In The Age Of Fake News
“If someone doesn’t recognise the joke we’re making, then that’s a whole lot of labour lost. We aim never to trick people but rather to train them to see the world as we see it. In a world infested by ‘fake news’, the intention [and subsequent execution] is everything.”
NYT Bestseller For A Day – The Rise And Fall Of A Book Few Had Heard Of
Lani Sarem’s “Handbook for Mortals” improbably topped the NYT Bestseller list last week. Then booksellers called foul, and the book was removed from the list. When Sarem saw the tweets circulating about her book, “my first thought was to just ignore it. It was just a couple of — you know, in my mind — silly tweets.” But as the day stretched on, and as she says neither Stamper nor West reached out to her personally, she reached a different conclusion: “I’m being cyberbullied, basically.”
People Used To Memorize Poems. In The Smartphone Era, Not So Much Anymore
“Since ancient times, humans have memorized and recited poetry. Before the invention of writing, the only way to possess a poem was to memorize it. Long after scrolls and folios supplemented our brains, court poets, priests and wandering bards recited poetry in order to entertain and connect with the divine. For individuals, a poem learned by heart could be a lifeline — to grapple with overwhelming emotion or preserve sanity amid the brutalities of prison and warfare.”
Terry Pratchett’s Unfinished Works Destroyed By Streamroller (A Vintage One)
“Pratchett’s hard drive was crushed by a vintage John Fowler & Co steamroller named Lord Jericho at the Great Dorset Steam Fair, ahead of the opening of a new exhibition about the author’s life and work.” Don’t worry: this is exactly what the bestselling author specified for after his death.
‘The Red Wheel’, Solzhenitsyn’s Eight-Volume Epic Of The Russian Revolution, To Be Published In English For First Time
“While Solzhenitsyn came up with the idea of The Red Wheel in the 1930s, he did not begin the first part, August 1914, until 1969. While the first and second – November 1916 – have previously been translated into English, the following six volumes have never been released in English before.”
Why The Booker Prize Is Bad For Literature
“There are at least two reasons why almost every anglophone novelist feels compelled to get as near the Booker Prize as they can. The first is because it looms over them and follows them around in the way Guy de Maupassant said the Eiffel Tower follows you everywhere when you’re in Paris.” Even so, writes Amit Chaudhuri, “I’m not saying that the Booker shouldn’t exist. I’m saying that it requires an alternative, and the alternative isn’t another prize.”
The Personal Essay – Inelegant Language As A Badge Of… Well, Something
“For a certain breed of personal essayist at work today, there exists a necessary and desirable trade-off between aesthetic clarity and moral complexity; a bargain premised on the depressing notion that words are always insufficient to the task at hand and so we may as well stop trying to choose the clearest or most precise ones. The adjective that best captures the conditions of this bargain is messy.”
Two Book Critics Consider The Lines Between Praise, Fairness, And Meanness
Thomas Mallon: “Today’s literary reviews too often turn into participation trophies, quiet tour-guide appreciations. Few things, of course, are duller than self-indulgent put-downs; but informed and spirited dismissals are another matter, and they remain in too-short supply.”
Liesl Schillinger: “There’s a distinct line between eulogy and fairness, but every critic knows you make more of a splash when you wield a bludgeon than when you bestow a bouquet. Yet Trollope also recognized that brickbats too readily brandished lose their power to stun.”
How Books Are Read Is As Important As What’s In Them
“It has long been thought, for instance, that the print revolution of the 18th century resulted in a shift from oral to silent reading, from shared reading to indulging in a book of one’s own, as books became more available to a wider range of people while leisure time also increased. But, says Abigail Williams, such a clear-cut transition is difficult to trace.”