Category: words

“Five Swedish-based scientists have been inserting Bob Dylan lyrics into research articles as part of a long-running bet. After 17 years, the researchers revealed their race to quote Dylan as many times as possible before retirement.”

It all started when the editor of Literaturnaya Gazeta and Kultura suggested that Solzhenitsyn voluntarily left the Soviet Union (he was expelled in 1974) and that he “essentially appealed to the Americans to begin a war” against the USSR.

Founder Stephanie Berger: “Poetry and prostitution are two of the oldest professions in the world and, in my opinion, were always destined to be bedfellows. Both poetry and sex feed the human need for intimacy, fantasy, desire, violence, and freedom.”

“In 2009, the number of independent bookstores in the nation stabilized at around 1,400, and then slowly began to grow. As of last May, the number of indie bookshops in the U.S. was 1,664. Why the turnaround?”

“It’s difficult to imagine the shuttering of a bookstore causing a similar outcry anywhere else—not to mention direct government involvement in the matter of a private lease. This has something to do with what the French call l’exception culturelle.”

“The familiarity of bad academic writing raises a puzzle. Why should a profession that trades in words and dedicates itself to the transmission of knowledge so often turn out prose that is turgid, soggy, wooden, bloated, clumsy, obscure, unpleasant to read, and impossible to understand?”

“When Carol Ann Duffy was appointed poet laureate in 2009, the first woman to hold the post in its nearly 350-year history, she set herself several goals that included setting up new prizes, giving support to new festivals and helping to generate commissions for poets.”

“Andrew Wylie, whose client roster of heavyweights in literature is probably longer than that of any other literary agent, said he was asking all his writers whether they wanted to join the group, Authors United. Among those who have said yes … are Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, V. S. Naipaul and Milan Kundera.”

“This month, the Librairie Delamain’s lease is up for renewal by the Qatari company Constellation Hotel Holdings, which … plans to double the bookstore’s rent to 100,000 euros per year – nearly a tenth of their annual revenue.” But now the Académie Française and the nation’s minister of culture have gotten involved.

“It was a dispute as bitter and drawn-out as Astérix the Gaul’s campaign against the Romans. On Friday, however, the illustrator Albert Uderzo … and his daughter … buried the hatchet after a court threw out a case brought by Sylvie Uderzo claiming her father had been tricked into selling off part of the family heritage.”