Who Killed Jane Austen? @1:40 PM
A British medical researcher has put forth a new theory on the disease that claimed Jane Austen's life. While previous speculation centered around Addison's disease or lymphoma, "Katherine White of the Addison's Disease Self Help Group has written an article for the British Medical Journal's Medical Humanities magazine in which she says that Austen probably died of tuberculosis caught from cattle." This postulation is actually borne out if one reads letters Austen sent to her family at the time, as well as the original ending of Sense and Sensibility, which was changed because it was thought to be too bleak. READ MORE 19
Literary Vices, with Rudolph Delson: The Literary Career of George H. W. Bush @2:50 PM
To while away the days until the publication of Sarah Palin's memoirs on November 17th, Rudolph Delson is reviewing the American vice presidential literary canon.
Say you were to make a list of every American who has ever run for the vice presidency. Say you were to take that list to your local library. Say you were to sit at the reference computer, and say you were to type the names on your list into the "author" field of the electronic catalog, and say you were to run a search on each and every one. Among the results would be Doing Business by the Good Book: 52 Lessons on Success Straight from the Bible. READ MORE 6
Literary Vices, with Rudolph Delson: Edmund Muskie's 'Journeys' @1:10 PM
To while away the days until the publication of Sarah Palin's 'Going Rogue' memoir on November 17th, Rudolph Delson is reviewing the American vice presidential literary canon.
Here is the quintessence of vice-presidential literature.
It is 1972. It was four years ago that President Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek re-election. It was four years ago that Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy dead. It was four years ago that the sitting Vice President, Hubert H. Humphrey, became the Democratic Party's nominee, and it was four years ago that Humphrey chose as his Vice President a dove, an intellectual, a liberal, a native from the distant northern state of Maine: Edmund Sixtus Muskie. And? READ MORE 5
Writing Sober @12:40 PM
"Minimalists tend to do better than maximalists. Flinty and workmanlike seem to win the day…. It is the self-proclaimed geniuses who suffer. Writers of long sentences seem to do worse than the writers of short ones." Tom Shone looks at what happens when writers go on the wagon. [Fair warning: The piece calls Faulkner and Fitzgerald "the Paris and Britney of their day" and puts Ernest Hemingway in the Amy Winehouse role. Still, probably worth a click.] 19
Gay Angel Sex! @10:51 AM
The angels in Paradise Lost totally got it on with each other. [Via] 5
"Catcher In The Rye" Sequel @11:42 AM
Who's up for a sequel to The Catcher in the Rye? Well, certainly John David California, the 32-year-old "former gravedigger and Ironman triathlete" who is also the writer of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, an unauthorized follow-up to the classic novel which everyone thinks is completely deep when they're fifteen but hopefully grows out of very soon after. Anyway, the new one features an aged Holden Caulfied escaping his nursing home and wandering around the city. California talks to the Guardian. READ MORE 8
Researchers Making New Literary Discoveries That Will Eventually Be Owned By Google @9:23 AM
Neat (yeah, suck it, it is neat) piece in the Journal on how the move to digitize literary works of antiquity has resulted in a number of new discoveries, including lost gospels, an alternate version of Medea in which the main character does not kill her children, and what is believed to be an attempt to reboot the Oedipus franchise by explaining that the Theban king and his wife Jocasta are "just cousins." (I may have made one of these things up.) Anyway, fascinating stuff. 9
