World War I Remembered in Second Life

in History, Literature | November 9th, 2009

Excel­lent find by Stephen Grant… You can now expe­ri­ence the bat­tle lines of World War I in Sec­ond Life, thanks to The First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive and the Learn­ing Tech­nolo­gies Group at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty. WWI shocked the West­ern world with its land­scape-chang­ing war­fare and high tech car­nage. Remem­brances of “The Great War” live on in some remark­able poet­ry and lit­er­a­ture. And now Sec­ond Life too. Find more infor­ma­tion on this project here.

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Jonathan Lethem on Art & The Digital Future

in Books, Literature | November 9th, 2009

Jonathan Lethem, the writer behind Moth­er­less Brook­lyn (one of my faves) and Fortress of Soli­tude, has a new book out, Chron­ic City. Above, he talks about the sur­re­al qual­i­ty of his work, the future of dig­i­tal books, and the per­son­al guide­lines that deter­mine what he writes, and won’t write. With­in this last point, you will find a good les­son for all of us. Find your unique tal­ent, ded­i­cate your­self to it, avoid the work com­mon­ly done by oth­ers, and you can achieve some­thing notable and worth­while.

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Wallace Stevens Reads His Own Poetry

in Literature, Poetry | October 23rd, 2009

This lit­tle col­lec­tion gives you access to Wal­lace Stevens (1879–1955), one of Amer­i­ca’s great poets, read­ing his own poet­ry. Among the poems, you will hear “The Idea of Order at Key West,” “The Poem that Took the Place of a Moun­tain,” “Vacan­cy in the Park,” and “To an Old Philoso­pher in Rome.” For more, you should see our pre­vi­ous post, Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work, and then below watch the clip below of ever-pro­lif­ic Yale lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor Harold Bloom recit­ing Stevens’ “Tea at the Palace of Hoon.”

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Anne Frank’s Diary: From Reject Pile to Bestseller

in History, Literature | October 13th, 2009

We’re lucky to have Anne Frank’s diary — lucky that the diary was ever dis­cov­ered, and lucky, too, that some­one took a chance on pub­lish­ing the even­tu­al best­seller. This is all nice­ly out­lined by Francine Prose, who has a new book out called Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The After­life. You can lis­ten to her full book talk here. And also be sure to see our recent post show­ing the only exist­ing video of Anne Frank. It’s now online.

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Plagiarism Software Discovers New Shakespeare Play

in Literature | October 12th, 2009

Or so that’s the claim of Bri­an Vick­ers, a pro­fes­sor at the Insti­tute of Eng­lish Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don. Accord­ing to a short piece in The New York Times, a soft­ware pack­age called Pl@giarism, usu­al­ly used to detect cheat­ing stu­dents, demon­strates that “The Reign of King Edward III,” a play pub­lished anony­mous­ly in 1596, has ele­ments of Shake­speare’s lin­guis­tic fin­ger­print. In short, phras­es used in the play match phras­es found in ear­li­er Shake­speare plays at least 200 times. Inter­est­ing­ly, the soft­ware also iden­ti­fies phras­es match­ing the lin­guis­tic fin­ger­print of anoth­er play­wright, Thomas Kyd, sug­gest­ing that Shake­speare did­n’t write the Edward play (or oth­er plays?) alone. The Times of Lon­don has more on these new claims.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Shake­speare on the iPhone

Goethe and Shake­speare on Google

What Did Shake­speare Real­ly Look Like

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James Ellroy on Re-Writing History

in Books, Literature | October 8th, 2009

James Ell­roy’s new crime fic­tion nov­el, Blood­’s a Rover, takes you back to the tumul­tuous sum­mer of 1968, to a world inhab­it­ed by J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hugh­es, the Black Pan­thers, and the mob run­ning their rack­ets in the Domini­can Repub­lic. Above, in his own inim­itable style, Ell­roy gives you the scoop on how he goes about writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion. To get a feel for the book, you can read a PDF of the first chap­ter here. And if you want to get the audio book for free, check out Audible.com’s stand­ing offer.

via Media Bistro

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Who is Herta Muller?

in Literature | October 8th, 2009

This morn­ing, the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture was award­ed to the Roman­ian author, Her­ta Muller. There’s a good chance that you’re not famil­iar with her work. So let me steer you to this pro­file in the Tele­graph. You can also read this excerpt­ed inter­view that goes back to 1999. If I come across any media fea­tur­ing Muller (so far, not much is com­ing up), I will post it as the day goes on.

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Nabokov Makes Editorial Improvements to Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”

in Literature | September 27th, 2009

nabokov_on_kafka

Vladimir Nabokov admired Franz Kafka’s novel­la, “The Meta­mor­pho­sis.” Hence the lec­ture that Nabokov ded­i­cat­ed to the work here. But he also saw some small ways to improve the sto­ry, or at least the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of it. Above, we have some edits that Nabokov penned him­self. And, just as an fyi, you can down­load a free ver­sions of Kafka’s work in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

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