Levelling up: how Gabrielle Zevin’s gaming novel became the book of the summer
I was gratified to read about the popularity in the U.K. of My Most Surprising Read of 2022.
Categories: Author News, Book News, Fiction
Negative capability
“When it comes to our complicated, undecipherable feelings, art prompts a self-understanding far beyond the wellness industry”
Art has the power to hold our attention, draw us away from ourselves, and keep us looking closely at something we don’t entirely understand. Learning to explore something unfamiliar and ambiguous, by wielding our imagination and curiosity, is like developing a kind of muscle, which could prove useful to other aspects of our lives. Perhaps the muscle is what Keats called ‘negative capability’: the ability to withstand doubt or uncertainty, remain open to that which is not readily understandable, resist the urge to explain away what we don’t comprehend, and to accept the impossibility of a singular conclusion.
Although Aparna Chivukula focuses on forms of visual art in this article, I believe that written art, mainly novels, can serve the same purpose: “Learning to explore something unfamiliar and ambiguous, by wielding our imagination and curiosity, is like developing a kind of muscle, which could prove useful to other aspects of our lives. Perhaps the muscle is what Keats called ‘negative capability’: the ability to withstand doubt or uncertainty, remain open to that which is not readily understandable, resist the urge to explain away what we don’t comprehend, and to accept the impossibility of a singular conclusion.”
The elegant extremist
“Ian McEwan has always tempered his shocking stories with polished prose”
In this profile of Ian McEwan, John Self asks, “When did Ian McEwan stop being a risk-taker, the enfant terrible of nasty sex (“Ian Macabre” was Private Eye’s nickname for him), and start being the grandfather of the well-plotted English literary novel of ideas?”
Categories: Author News, Fiction, Literary Criticism, Literary History, Writing
Simone de Beauvoir and the art of loss
“Sixty years ago, the French writer’s unflinching memoir of her mother’s death tested the limits of her existentialism.”
“Free thinkers are troubling. They’re disturbing. In a time fixated on category and identity like our own, de Beauvoir is bound to be, as ever, both freeing and troubling,” writes Ali Smith about Simone de Beauvoir, “one of the most influential and controversial champions of complexity in the human subject, and of an ethic of ambiguity as a positive fundament in both human thought and the construction of personal and social identity.”
Categories: Author News, Life Stories in Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary History, Writing
What Do We Want From the Bookish Internet?
Twitter may be gone, but “Twitter is not the internet, the internet is not Twitter,” writes Molly Templeton. But, she insists, her post is not about Twitter. It’s “about readers, and the internet, and what we want from all of it. What are we doing here? What do we wish we were doing here? What would the bookish internet look like if we could recreate it in some ideal form?”
Templeton remembers the early days of the internet, including book blogs—YES, book blogs!—reader forums, and other sites of thoughtful threaded discussion, all of which existed before the internet became totally corporatized, monetized, and videotized. She ends with several questions, including “What would a real bookish forum look like?” and “Where do you go when you want bookish community? Where do you want to go?”
Categories: Discussion, Literary Criticism, Reading, Writing
‘It’s exciting, it’s powerful’: how translated fiction captured a new generation of readers
“From Argentinian horror to Japanese thrillers, under-35s are reading more internationally than ever before, with iconic covers becoming status symbols and fans swapping their discoveries online”
Categories: Literary Criticism, Literary History, Reading, Writing
Paperback or hardcover? Used or new? Let’s talk about our book habits.
“Michael Dirda shares 29 of his rules for reading. They are not hard and fast.”
For your entertainment. How many of his rules (“They’re more like guidelines”) do you agree or disagree with?
Category: Reading
‘Things started getting weird’: why my novel caused a storm in my small town
What happens when people think you’ve written them into your novel . . .
Categories: Reading, Writing
Gender Criticism Versus Gender Abolition: On Three Recent Books About Gender
Grace Lavery discusses these books in the context of the history of feminism:
- Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce
- Feminism for Women: The Real Tribute to Liberation by Julie Bindel
- Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism by Kathleen Stock
Her conclusion:
[Gender abolition] would better reflect the reality that scientists and feminists have been insisting on since the 1860s: that “men” and “women” are inferred from sexual characteristics, and that some of those traits are and can be changed. Gender is how women are oppressed; sex is the excuse patriarchy uses for the oppression of women. Reality—the reality shared by women, actual women, in the world—really does matter for feminism. Metaphysical definitions of the category “woman” really, really don’t.
Category: Nonfiction
Seven Books That Will Make You Put Down Your Phone
“These titles self-consciously aim to grab their reader’s attention.”
Reading suggestions from Bekah Waalkes, whose aim in teaching undergraduates is “to help my students relearn how to read in the age of distraction.” What all these books have in common is “their ability to refresh your powers of observation and make you see the real world in a new manner by the end.”
Categories: Book Recommendations, Reading
© 2023 by Mary Daniels Brown
