More Moonshine, Please!
Fly us to the moon, or out past the fog. But please, oh wow please let’s bypass any Sotomayor updates this fine Wednesday morning. Hey, we know it’s important, and we are interested. It’s just that, as our cranky colleague pointed out earlier, everybody and their mother is live blogging the Sotomayor hearings. So yes sir today we’ll make like a tree and stick to what we know. Or wish we knew: Good old double talk and book speak. Bear with us. OK, The Elegant Variation knows how to have a civilized conversation. Recently they had one with Joseph O’Neill. Keats and Byron receive a bit of 21st century love. That old dog…the bane of our civilization…MFA writing programs…are brought down by force in Critical Flame. Then we read what novelists who write about the fog in San Francisco have to say about the fog in San Francisco. Lastly, for today’s warm and fuzzy feeling, let’s see what H-Net has to say about fascism. Dominus Opus, and good day. — Kevin Murphy
– Back in February, Joseph O’Neill passed through Los Angeles, and we had the chance to sit down over lunch at the Getty Center for a long talk about Netherland, writing, cricket, literary celebrity, Zadie Smith and other assorted topics. The Irish-born, Dutch-raised barrister-turned-novelist is the author of three novels and a memoir. We’ll be running the interview in four parts this week, and we’ll finish up with a giveaway on Friday of the new paperback edition of Netherland. — Joseph O’Neill in Elegant Variation
– Keats’ poetry is still very much read and loved by students taking A levels or the Leaving Certificate or English Literature in tertiary institutions. The poems have a place in my heart as well. Particularly so because the themes in Keats’ poems capture conflicts of the human soul. Conflicts which are not ephemeral but transcend geography and time. — Keats in NST Online
Byron, You Dog! Write Something!
– Not many writers furnish enough material for a biography focused entirely on their love lives. In his short life (1788-1824), George Gordon, Lord Byron, managed to cram in just about every sort of connection imaginable. — Lord Byron in Slate
– How did we move from the café to the classroom, and from the strong pull of individual genius and personality — Pound and Joyce, Hemingway and Faulker — to the doughy group workshops from which M.F.A graduates rise like cookie-cutter cookies? — The Degree Dilemma in Critical Flame
SF Fog: It's Not Cliche if it's Cool.
– Yes, it’s possible to write a novel about San Francisco without including the fog, but why would you when it sets the atmosphere as nothing else can? — Foggy Adjectives in SFGate
– Fascism Past and Present, West and East invites readers to take part in an international debate with thirty-one German- and English-speaking experts on fascism. On the surface, some of the key questions that frame the discussion are familiar, long-discussed ones: is German National Socialism best studied as a unique phenomenon or a form of fascism? — Fascism in H-Net
Video: Mussolini’s Fascism
