reading
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The History of Literature #476 — Does Edith Wharton Hate You? (Part 1 – “Xingu”)
Does Edith Wharton hate us? That’s a provocative question – but perhaps one that Wharton herself provoked, with her essay on the readers who damaged literature and her fiction satirizing the same. In this two-part series, Jacke takes a look at the type of readers targeted by Wharton: not the readers of trash fiction, whom Continue reading
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The History of Literature #438 – How Was Your Ulysses? (with Mike Palindrome)
In 1922, a writer for the Observer commented: “No book has been more eagerly and curiously awaited by the strange little inner circle of book-lovers and littérateurs than James Joyce’s Ulysses.” After declaring Joyce to be a man of genius, the writer said, “I cannot see how the work upon which Mr Joyce spent seven Continue reading
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History of Literature Episode #136 – The Kids Are All Right (Aren’t They?) Making the Case for Literature
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL7957805150.mp3 Does literature matter? Why read at all? Jacke Wilson takes questions from high school students and attempts to make the case for literature. Works and authors discussed include Beloved, The Great Gatsby, Shakespeare, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm, Scarlet Letter, Of Mice and Men, the Odyssey, The Inferno, Continue reading
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Virginia Woolf on How to Read a Book
Via Maria Popova’s Brainpickings (of course!), we get this amazing overview of Virginia Woolf’s amazing advice on how to read a book. The whole post is worth reading, but here’s a taste: To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great fineness of perception, but of Continue reading
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What They Knew #28
“You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart Continue reading
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What They Knew #27
“A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle…” – Vladimir Nabokov Continue reading
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What They Knew #25: Proust on the Miracle of Reading
“Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.” – Marcel Proust Continue reading
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Ten Bold Predictions for 2014: An Analysis
Digital Book World has a list of ten bold predictions for ebooks digital publishing in 2014. Some of them delve into brave new world territory, but for those of us who have been around for a while, who can remember the days before you could carry a device in your pocket that can make phone Continue reading
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My Dante, Part II
Yesterday I gave my advice for how to enjoy Dante and proposed a new translation. Today I put myself to the test, to see whether my approach to translating Dante is superior to the recent (highly accomplished) verse of Clive James and Mary Jo Bang. Before we get to that, let me emphasize again the Continue reading
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The Writer’s Mind: Sharing the Creative Experience
I’ve been following the many discussions recently of why we like long novels. And while those are interesting and fun, I think they’ve missed something important about the length of the creative work and its impact on the reader. My moment of truth was handed to me by that fabulous liar, Edgar Allan Poe. I’ll Continue reading
Jacke Wilson 