Fans of the author of The Aleph can check out an online hypertext version of his lesser-known short story, The Book of Sand, animated and transformed into a puzzle.
Think you’ve figured out The Sound and the Fury? Another hypertext lets you view the the book two ways: both as Faulkner wrote it and how it occurs chronologically. Literature undergrads rejoice.
Researchers at Boston College think they’ve devised an equation to represent the manner in which Jackson Pollock spread paint–and it involves fractals. (Infinite Jest, anyone?)
On the subject of decoding: flashback to ten years ago, when two researchers from the University of Texas and University of Pennsylvania, respectively, analyzed batches of poems to see if certain words or language patterns appeared in the works of suicidal poets.
FENCE editor Rebecca Wolff on moving from poetry to fiction in her new novel, The Beginners: “I’ve always been a big fan of the novel, and of sentences, so I wouldn’t say it was difficult though it certainly has been challenging to learn how to make characters move through space and time. My poetry is not of the narrative variety, so it took me quite a while to get the hang of these kinds of powerful moves“”
Turns out there’s a hubbub across the pond regarding the Booker Prize announcements.
Paul Auster: “Whatever form, people are hungry for stories. Children–think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was, how important these imaginary experience were for you. They help shape reality. And I think human beings wouldn’t be human without narrative, fiction.”
Over at The Rumpus, Paul Madonna uses his strip, SMALL POTATOES, to explore the realities of making it as an artist.