The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories
By Bob Blaisdell | 11.21.09
Translators are cooks trying to follow recipes to the letter, but by necessity they have to use the ingredients and equipment they’ve got at home. They make do and hope the approximations taste good. The American/Russian husband/wife team Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are known for their translations of the Russian classics, and we should at least be grateful that their productions remind us to read or reread some of the best literature in the world. Learn Russian if you can (it’s taken me four years of hard labor to be lousy at it), or accept with gratitude what Pevear and Volokhonsky serve you. (more…)
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The Education of a British-Protected Child
By Geoff Wisner | 11.05.09
In 1958, while he was still in his 20s, Chinua Achebe published “Things Fall Apart,” the story of a traditional leader named Okonkwo whose inflexible nature undermines his humanity and his ability to resist the encroachments of British missionaries. “Things Fall Apart” has sold more than 8 million copies. It is the one African novel that everyone has heard of. (more…)
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Mentors, Muses & Monsters
By Susan Comninos | 11.03.09
Once, I was young and broke and living in Boston. It was 1991 – another bleak economic year – but, high on the town’s literary history, I moved there after graduate school to become a writer. Instead, the months sped past as I scored just one or two ill-paid freelance gigs. (more…)
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My Paper Chase
By Justin Moyer | 10.31.09
Read any good newspapers lately? Read any newspapers lately? If not, here’s the scoop: blogs, not banner headlines, swarm the digital frontier’s horizon, and the fourth estate has its pixels in a bunch over the future of print media. (more…)
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The Pattern in the Carpet
By Geoff Wisner | 10.20.09
Margaret Drabble’s new book, The Pattern in the Carpet, as she explains on the first page, is a cross between a memoir and a history of the jigsaw puzzle. It looks at first like a cozy book, full of idyllic reminiscences of a slower and more rural way of life. And in fact, it describes how Drabble’s Auntie Phyl “taught us to peg rugs, and to sew, and to do French knitting, and to make lavender bags, and to thread bead necklaces, and to bake rock cakes and coconut fingers, and to play patience.” (more…)
