Best of the Week: April 13-17, 2015

TODAY:  In 1958, a US federal court ruled that Ezra Pound was to be released from an insane asylum.

• “Whether the women are disguised as men or whether they’re in their women’s dresses, or whether they’re women creating love in the world or whether they’re women creating pain and suffering in the world…”—the evolution of Shakespeare’s portrayal of women. | NPR
• The Great Gatsby—which turned 90 last Friday—is now one of the most sought-after first editions, despite originally being a critical and commercial flop. | Lapham’s Quarterly
• “We were two Southern men laughing together in an easy way, linked by class and food.” On “trash food” and linguistic implications. | Oxford American
• “What do you do with your mixed feelings toward a text that treats as stage furniture the most grievous and unhealed insult in American history—especially when you belong to the insulted group?” Elif Batuman asks if we can overlook racism in, and still enjoy, outmoded texts. | The New Yorker
• The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom released its annual “Top Ten List of Frequently Challenged Books,” based on reports of community members’ Orwellian attempts to have literature removed from libraries and school curricula. | LA Times
• “My dad moved to Atlanta twenty-nine years ago with one suitcase, and began to name the new things he saw, and press himself into this life, and a world sprang up around him.” On using language to create a home. | Granta
• “When words are used so cheaply, experience becomes surreal; acts are unhinged from consequences and all sense of personal responsibility is lost.” A re-reintroduction to Renata Adler. | The New Republic
• Is it possible to make money selling used books for a penny? If you’re taking in 20 tons of them a week, maybe! | The Guardian
• The PEN American Center announced the shortlists for its literary awards. Included: Roxane Gay, Teju Cole, Claudia Rankine, Molly Antopol, and Leslie Jamison. | The New York Times
• In some sort of meta-ekphrasis, Colm Tóibín describes an exhibition of paintings depicting Don Quixote. | NYRB
• The New Yorker’s art editor learned English through imagery, using comics to “see a written language as it’s spoken.” | Guernica
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Haruki Murakami have officially been designated as influential. | TIME Magazine
• Colorado is moving one step closer to becoming heaven on earth (now complete with rustic reading experience). | The New York Times
• Why Jane Austen triumphed where Frances Burney failed? The importance of the right kind of day jobs for writers. | The Millions
• A newly discovered passage that reveals L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time to have a more nuanced worldview: “Security is a most seductive thing… I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the greatest evil there is.” | Wall Street Journal
• Sarah Koenig’s wizardry aside, why our brains love Podcasts. | The Atlantic

And from Literary Hub:

• Teju Cole’s photos from Switzerland. | Literary Hub
• “The history of the border is a history of imagination. It’s a matter of who has the power to impose their imagination on the other.” From Julie Chinitz’s narrative history of US immigration (Part 1 and Part 2) | Literary Hub
• Extremist cults, the dangerous lure of charismatic madmen, the socialization of a feral child, and coming of age amid turn-of-the-millennium paranoia; a conversation between Katherine Dunn and Porochista Khakpour. | Literary Hub
• Tracy K. Smith on poetry, grief, and what memoir can do that poetry can’t. | Literary Hub
• Jennifer S. Cheng on the Japanese shut-in phenomenon of hikikomori and the rhythms of life as an American recluse. | Literary Hub

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