Hail & Farewell, Alexander Pushkin
Among the many abstractions abandoned by modernity and rarely confronted in cosmopolitan, “First World” settings like the one I’m self-congratulatingly writing from, if you will allow that unfashionable designation (especially… Read more »
Are we too stupid to read Dickens?
We’re familiar with the argument: the modern age is bankrupting our attention spans, we are all technology-addled morons clicking semi-consciously between browser screens, unable to complete the simplest of tasks:… 3 / Read more »
Happy birthday Charles Dickens: World-wide celebration begins
Despite the fact that some people believe Charles Dickens can not be read or appreciated by today’s gadget-addled callow youth (see Ellie Robin’s Mobylives article), the rest of us are… Read more »
Happy Birthday, Charles Dodgson
On this date, January 27, the eminent mathematician and Fellow of Christ Church college, Oxford, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in 1832. He is the distinguished author of An Elementary… 1 / Read more »
Moby Dick toilet paper
Even the editors who rejected his manuscripts didn’t go this far: You can now use Herman Melville’s magnum opus, Moby Dick, as toilet paper. Typing the canonized favourite onto bog… Read more »
Bizarre-o feats of human endurance
Tom Meyer recited the entire Book of Revelations (one hour, from memory) to the thirty people assembled at the Imperial Community Church in El Centro, California, on Sunday night. “Meyer,… 2 / Read more »
Dickens and the paper trail: What we lose when editing is electronic
It’s a Christmas miracle: Cambridge University Press is allowing us to see what the original manuscript of Great Expectations looked like. As The Guardian reports, it’s a charming, labyrinthine mess… Read more »
Balzac’s glazed game and food in fiction
A few pages of Balzac is all you need to know that you’re in the company of a serious foodie—his descriptions of meals and restaurants are painstaking, mouthwatering and frequent.… Read more »
160 years of Moby Dick
The first US edition of Moby Dick was published 160 years ago yesterday. Happy birthday, namesake! In celebration, HarperCollins published a copy of the original contract for The Whale as signed by Herman… Read more »
The trouble with Pippi
Looking back on my adolescence, I now realize that my acts of rebellion were probably more admirable than they were provocative — especially from the perspective of my YA librarian… Read more »