Last week was banned books week, and while most books displayed at the Consortium’s entrance have great literary merit—A Clockwork Orange, Song of Solomon, The Satanic Verses—one stood out as having practically none: Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” The translator for this 2001 edition, Ralph Manheim, quickly highlights Mein Kampf’s literary deficiencies. “There is no indication that [...]
Archive for the ‘@ Your Library’ Category
@ your library: The Yoko Ono of poetry
August 23rd, 2011 by Matt
Ted Hughes is perhaps best known for being the husband of Sylvia Plath. He’s sort of the Yoko Ono of the poetry world. For 35 years after Plath’s suicide, Hughes said nothing of the relationship, and many a feminist accused of him of driving his wife to kill herself (the fact that his second wife [...]
@ your library: “J.B.” by Archibald MacLeish
August 9th, 2011 by Matt
Too bad Shakespeare rarely used stage directions. They can be quite enjoyable for people whose only contact with a play is through writing. Contemporary playwrights have made great use of them, perhaps because they know people will actually read their plays, at least on a greater scale than in 1610.
@ your library: suicide
July 26th, 2011 by Matt
Like many academic titles before, Dr. Robert Edgerton’s latest work, “A Comparative Survey of Suicide: Scandinavia, Asia, Africa, United States,” aims for objectivity. Some academics like to inflate the meaning of their findings with colorful or incredibly dense prose, but Edgerton’s straight-forward style encourages the facts to impact the reader. The closest he approaches to [...]
@ your library: Israel is in Sitka
June 28th, 2011 by Matt
Of course the Jewish State is set up elsewhere. But people still wonder what if. “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” is Michael Chabon’s 400 page exploration through the question, what if. What if the Jewish State was set up in Alaska, specifically Sitka Alaska. What if Sitka was now a metropolis with 3.2 million people, with [...]
