In our morning reading: revisiting the work of Iris Murdoch, Steve Almond discussed his book about “Stoner,” and more.
Iris Murdoch at 92Y, 1990
The Paris Review teamed up with 92Y as part of a collaborative interview series between the two venerable institutions. The results are as wonderful as you’d expect, including this 1990 conversation between James Atlas and Iris Murdoch that we really like.
Poetry in Motion: Sympathy for Notre Dame Football from Great Irish Writers
This week, Notre Dame woefully dongs its bell tower, with each member of the proud college’s football phalanx feeling like a true Quasimodo. A crushing 42-14 defeat in Monday’s bowl-game-of-all-bowl-games to Forrest Gump’s alma mater inspired many an armchair Lombardi nationwide to – in ways both fair and callous – damn the Fighting Irish as faux-contenders. “Unfit to the cleats of several squads arguably more deserving of BCS title game contention,” says some easily imagined surly grump.
Elias Canetti: When Memoirs Mattered
Thanks to books like Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, these have been dark days for the memoir. But seriously,they aren’t these totally evil wastes of pages just because Trig’s mommy wanted to show off the pictures of the wolves she shot out of a helicopter. Elias Canetti wrote four volumes of his memoirs, and New Directions releases the final one today, Party in the Blitz. In it, the Bulgarian-born, Nobel Prize winner writes about his time spent living in exile in […]