Whoop, whoop, blog fiends—it’s Friday! You’ve probably already partaken in your fair share of literary personality quizzes (they provide a cheap alternative to psychoanalysis when your insurance goes bad, and it’s always heartening to read you’re more of a Dumbledore than a Malfoy), but the New Yorker‘s article contrasting Italian recluse Elena Ferrante with Norwegian road-tripper Karl Ove Knausgaard is of particular interest to those of us interested in more international literary trends. (Meanwhile, if you’re excited for the English-language release of Book 4 of Knausgaard’s My Struggle, you can read an exclusive excerpt here).
The hullabaloo over Robert Durst’s pseudo-confession in the HBO series “The Jinx” has been summarized in literary circles far and wide—for Durst’s hubris, his bloodthirst, and greed, and none other than English legend William Shakespeare can tell us more about these three tragic traits. The New Yorker‘s Adam Gopnik breaks down the Bard’s villainous soliloquies in relation to Durst’s own utterances. And lest we forget that many (or most?) political characters are inspired by true-life wheelers and dealers—and that the imaginative and embodied spheres intersect more often than not: Leo Tolstoy’s great-great grandson is a political advisor to oft-reviled Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin.
After spending seventeen years in a Soviet gulag, writing prolifically, Russian short story writer Varlam Shalamov purports to hate literature. And similarly, French author MIchel Houellebecq is no stranger living his life in imaginative controversy—in 2011, he went under the radar to such a degree that many suspected he had been kidnapped. He wasn’t kidnapped, but a new film imagines the circumstance of if he had been, (unsurprisingly) titled The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq.
How best to revitalize a smaller language? In New York, a Yiddish production of Arthur Miller’s famed Death of a Salesman is coming to an Off-Broadway stage. And the New York Times takes a hard look at various dying American languages, languages relying on their last speakers to survive.In a similar vein, the New York Times takes a look at how the English language ruined the literature of India.
The Man Booker Award is purportedly international, but has come under fire for refusing its supposed internationality in favor of anglo-centrism: this year’s shortlist, which includes the likes of Hungarian Laszlo Krasznahorkai (read his piece in Asymptote here!), Argentinian César Aira (check out his take on Osvaldo Lamborghini in Asymptote, too!) and Mozambican Mia Couto (featured in a blog post here!), looks to buck that trend. And Indian-American writer Akhil Sharma wins the prestigious Folio Prize for fiction for his novel, Family Life, which took him thirteen years to complete (a reminder that persistence can be rewarded!).