Martin Johnson Heade, Approaching Thunder Storm, 1859
1. As the work of W.G. Sebald did in the 90s and the work of Roberto Bolaño did during the last decade, I had an inkling that it might be Clarice Lispector's turn for reappraisal and societal obsession. Her writing has long been scattered and hard to find in English and I was thinking that perhaps the new collection of her complete stories published in May by New Directions might change all that, causing her literary star to explode as it had long ago in Brazil. There was a great deal of press, yes, but I'd be hard pressed to think that a popularity phenomenon is in store for her. A long preface to a single link, I know, but Lispector is a strange writer and, from all accounts, an even stranger person, so some prelude to this wonderful piece on her relationship with Elizabeth Bishop was in order:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/251142
2. Perhaps only a handful will read it, but bravo to the Nation for publishing this long, difficult piece on philosophy and Wallace Stevens. Susan Howe really gets into the meat of it, unpacking Stevens through his letters, his life, and from deep readings of his poems. That you can still publish a piece like this makes me happy:
http://www.thenation.com/article/vagrancy-in-the-park/
3. And in the same week as the Lispector piece, I find this about German author Maria Beig. I remember running across an article like this many years ago by Jonathan Franzen about why I should read Paula Fox's Desperate Characters, and now hardly a week goes by that I do not think about that novella and the cat bite that sets its action into motion. Beig seems neglected and tough. I am ready to dive in.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/10/16/no-judgment-no-message-no-mercy/
4. I am not sure how many times my readers can take the appearance of George Saunders on this blog, but here he is again, with a New Yorker essay that everyone is talking about. Lists are cruel, unfeeling clickable bits of awful, but I admit I had a moment the other night where I actually tried to rank Saunders and Tobias Wolff (the subject of the following essay) among the masters of the short story. Thankfully, I sobered up and realized that the pursuit was foolish: my life is better because I read Chekhov AND Trevor AND Munro AND O'Conner AND Hemingway AND Taylor. You get the idea. Read them all. They are all great.
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/my-writing-education-a-timeline
Video of the Week:
5. Yesterday was the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt, so it only fitting to post Kenneth Branagh's version of the St. Crispin Day Speech from Henry V:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-yZNMWFqvM
And Laurence Olivier's from 1944:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9fa3HFR02E
Poem for the Week:
6. I am reading and reviewing Colm Tóibín's immensely pleasurable and rigorous study of Elizabeth Bishop as we speak, and considering link number 1 today, of course, we must have a poem by Bishop to chew on. I think her masterful and devastating At the Fish houses will do the trick. (also, the Heade painting above makes me think of this poem, Heade alone captures Bishop's troubled stillness, this painting is elusive, opaque, yet I dare you to feel other than though you are staring right through it)
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-the-fishhouses/