Category: words

John Jeremiah Sullivan suggests that the form might just have, literally, a royal pedigree.

“No part of speech has had to put up with so much adversity as the adverb. The grammatical equivalent of cheap cologne or trans fat, the adverb is supposed to be used sparingly, if at all, to modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. … Not everybody, however, looks askance at the part of speech. Indeed, there is at least one place where the adverb not only flourishes but wields power – the American legal system.”

“In a wide-ranging list that culls from across Canadian regions, the fiction finalists include Michael Crummey, who was expected to be among the major prize winners this fall for his latest novel, Sweetland, but failed to place on the Giller and Writers’ Trust lists; Thomas King for The Back of the Turtle; and Claire Holden Rothman for My October.”

“Ladbrokes, which has frequently seen the eventual victor surge to the top of its odds in the days before the announcement, said today that Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Haruki Murakami were, at 4/1, joint favourites to win Thursday’s eight million kronor (£693,000) prize.”

The former U.S. Poet Laureate’s eight-week massive open online course, “The Art of Poetry”, began last week. It’s free, but not easy: the syllabus says the work will be “demanding, and based on a certain kind of intense, exigent reading, requiring prolonged in fact, repeated attention to specific poems.”

Boston hopes that its newly-designated literary mecca – which features everything from the homes of Thoreau, the Jameses, and Plath to the hotel where Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh once worked to menu items like “Mel-Ville Chowder” and the “Poe-Boy Sandwich” (really?) – will “promote business and job growth and enhance property values in [its] own eclectic, well-educated way.”

“Hornby argued reading should be seen more like television or the cinema, and only undertaken as something people ‘want to do.'”

“Writers are very fragile, they’re like butterflies or perhaps moths; they can be easily crumpled. If you’re very sensitive, which I am, it only takes a raised eyebrow or a chance remark about an idea for you to lose confidence.”

“In recent years, as Russia has grown politically repressive and culturally conservative, [Lyudmila] Ulitskaya’s fiction, which addresses both religion and politics, has moved in for a confrontation. Increasingly, Ulitskaya has also become a public intellectual. … She has amassed many of Europe’s most prestigious literary prizes, even as she has come under attack at home.”

“Poetry belongs to us all. We started speaking by reciting poems and everyday we plug ourselves in to our phones and listen to music with lyrics that are made up of poetry. It is everywhere. And it is ours. Perhaps the university professors would like us to believe that poems belong to them, but we mustn’t let this happen.”