If you’ve ever felt frustrated with J. D. Salinger, James Joyce, Henry James, Miguel de Cervantes, or Thomas Pynchon, you’re not alone.
Robert Pinsky in the Boston Herald: “I’m afraid that well-meaning, earnest teaching gives too many people the idea that poetry is primarily a test to see if you can say something smart. The main thing you need to learn about poetry is that is it primarily words that sound good when you say them. Poetry must begin with the experience of a poem. People analyze and interpret their families all their lives“ but it’s not how you become attached to them.”
(Speaking of the Boston Herald, apparently the newspaper’s name has become so ubiquitously misspelled that it now operates other an additional URL. Readers can enjoy the Boston Herlad at bostonherlad.com.)
Prandicle. Rogalian. Supellectile. Siagonology. Stiricide. Foppotee. Save the words!
Reading fiction doesn’t just enlarge your vocabulary and make you more conscious of other peoples’ experiences: turns out, it might also alter your personality in a quantifiable way (as if you needed another reason).Sloane Crosley: “The interesting thing about the question ???why are you writing about what you’re writing about’ is–The dirty secret of the answer. That would be that I don’t know. But that doesn’t make for a very interesting interview, does it? People assume that once you have a modicum of success that everything you did up until that point happened on purpose. And that you have the answers.”
This month, fans at the Edinburgh International Book Festival will attempt to break the world record for longest reading chain, currently set last year in Vienna when 290 participants each read one sentence aloud from a novel and passed it on.
Another thing that Poe, Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare, and others have in common: they’re now collectible action figures.