Category: words

India has had languages of the elite in the past — Sanskrit was one, Persian another. They were needed to unite an entity more linguistically diverse than Europe. But there was perhaps never one that bore such an uneasy relationship to the languages operating beneath it, a relationship the Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock has described as “a scorched-earth policy,” as English.

“Bondage is so last year. Publishers who spent much of the past year in search of the next Fifty Shades of Grey are now seeking to exploit another literary phenomenon: the British public’s seemingly unfettered desire for nature writing.”

“‘He thought he’d wasted his life,’ Carpenter says, ‘and he thought if only he could finish this book, and I could help him, then that would be his immortality.'”

“The book includes over 50 recipes scribbled by Pollock, his wife, and his mother on loose paper. These were often circulated among close friends, because apparently Rothko and de Kooning couldn’t make lunch to save their life.”

“The scandal in France involving manuscripts’ dealer Gérard Lhéritier and his company Aristophil is growing daily. Earlier this month, he was charged with fraud, money laundering, creating false accounts and embezzlement. Bail was set at €2m. … Experts have started to inventory the company’s huge collection of around 135,000 documents, and two legal firms have begun registering complaints from the company’s 18,000 clients.”

“A solar eclipse will be visible across the UK on Friday, coinciding with the vernal equinox. To celebrate, we look back at how authors have been inspired by this ‘obliteration’ of the sun as well as the onset of spring.”

“Newly discovered documents show that the Staffordshire police fabricated evidence to try to discredit Arthur Conan Doyle’s investigation into the curious case of George Edalji, a Birmingham solicitor accused of maiming horses and sending poison-pen letters at the turn of the 20th century.”

“Billed as a ‘go-to daily source for all the news, ideas, and richness of contemporary literary life,’ Literary Hub promises curated and original content such as interviews, profiles and essays.” Its founder, Grove Atlantic president Morgan Entrekin, wants LitHub.com to be “salvation rather than competition for the numerous literary Web sites already grasping for eyeballs.”

“Now that amateur autobiography and its detractors are everywhere, autobiographical writers are increasingly invested in defining and defending the value of their work. How can it escape the gravitational pull of solipsism? For a growing number of essayists, memoirists, and other wielders of the unwieldy ‘I,’ confessional has become an unwelcome label—an implicit accusation of excessive self-absorption, of writing not just about oneself but for oneself.”