TODAY: In 1749, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is born; his first book, The Sorrows of Young Werther, starts Werther-Fieber (“Werther Fever”) causing young men throughout Europe to dress like Werther.
- Mylène Dressler learns to surf at 49, battles fear, the ocean, writes about it. | Literary Hub
- Elena Ferrante on the literary gynaeceum, the male colonization of our imaginations, and the complexity of friendship. | Vanity Fair
- Dissecting another complex friendship, the relationship between Jonathan Franzen and us. | Vulture
- “I don’t care if you think I’m making you feel uncomfortable. I feel better. And that is important to me.” An interview with Claudia Rankine. | BuzzFeed
- In which Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake is contrasted to an alpaca (behold its un-camelid qualities here). | NPR
- On Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, which rose above the literary popinjays of its time to become a groundbreaking American classic. | The American Scholar
- Reading the memoir of Patrick Modiano, writer with “neither ground nor roots.” | The New Republic
- In the greatest literary hoax since the Donation of Constantine, Twitter was falsely convinced that Cormac McCarthy had joined its ranks (he is, however, writing a science novel). | Entertainment Weekly, Flavorwire
- A last minute, but very promising, new candidate has entered this season’s race for Most Clueless White Person in Publishing. | LA Times
Also on Literary Hub: Justin Taylor’s book tour play list · The eternal relevance of Holocaust diaries · Fat City: one of the all-time great one-hit wonders · An excerpt from Leonard Garner’s 1969 Fat City, now available from NYRB
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