literature
War & Peace; great, but has anyone read it? Not the cast of the new BBC production
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/12078324/War-and-Peace-great-but-has-anyone-read-it-Not-the-cast-of-the-new-BBC-production.html | via @Telegraph
A Better Way to Think About the Genre Debate by Joshua Rothman
Frye’s scheme is simple. In his view, the world of fiction is composed of four braided genres: novel, romance, anatomy, and confession. “Pride and Prejudice” is a novel. “Wuthering Heights” isn’t: it’s a romance, an extension of a form that predates the novel by many hundreds of years. (“The romancer does not attempt to create ‘real people’ so much as stylized figures which expand into psychological archetypes,” Frye writes. “That is why the romance so often radiates a glow of subjective intensity that the novel lacks.”) Novels take place in the regulated world—in “society”—and are driven by plots. Romances take place “in vacuo,” on the moors, where “nihilistic and untamable” things tend to happen. The characters in romances are often revolutionaries, but “the social affinities of the romance, with its grave idealizing of heroism and purity, are with the aristocracy.” For that reason, novels, which thrive on social sophistication, often incorporate romance in an ironic way (“Don Quixote,” “Lord Jim”). Many young-adult books, like those in the “Hunger Games” trilogy, are pure romances: maybe, instead of asking why so many grownups read young-adult novels, we ought to be asking why novels are losing, and romances gaining, in appeal.
http://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-rothman/better-way-think-genre-debate
Expression of emotion in books declined during 20th century, study finds – News releases – News – The University of Sheffield
We report here trends in the usage of “mood” words, that is, words carrying emotional content, in 20th century English language books, using the data set provided by Google that includes word frequencies in roughly 4% of all books published up to the year 2008. We find evidence for distinct historical periods of positive and negative moods, underlain by a general decrease in the use of emotion-related words through time. Finally, we show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more “emotional” than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language.
There is no greater recognition of literary achievement and flower bestowment than the moving of the toothbrush. (No word on the dental floss, at this point.)
(From Examiner.com)
Amber made her man chase, letting him pen original poetry that accompanied the daily flower delivery from Johnny Depp. Unnamed sources have explained the rebound romance:
“They both love literature and the way he tried to win her back totally worked. Once they flew to his island in the Bahamas for a romantic break a couple of weeks ago, they were back on as a couple.
“She has now moved her toothbrush back into Johnny’s LA mansion…”
Carlos Fuentes, Mexican Novelist, Dies at 83 – NYTimes.com
Carlos Fuentes, Mexican Novelist, Dies at 83 – NYTimes.com
…Mr. Fuentes was one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world, a catalyst, along with Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar, of the explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and ’70s, known as El Boom. He wrote plays, short stories, political nonfiction and novels, many of them chronicles of tangled love…
…Mr. Fuentes received wide recognition in the United States in 1985 with his novel “The Old Gringo,” a convoluted tale about the American writer Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared during the Mexican Revolution. It was the first book by a Mexican novelist to become a best seller north of the border, and it was made into a 1989 film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda…
…But it was mainly through his literature, Mr. Fuentes believed, that he could make his voice heard, and he did so prolifically and inventively, tracing the history of modern Mexico in layered stories that also explored universal themes of love, memory and death…
…“I think I became a writer because I heard those stories,” he said in 2006 in an interview with the Academy of Achievement, a nonprofit organization in Washington. His grandmothers fascinated him with their tales of bandits, revolution and reckless love. “They had the whole storehouse of the past in their heads and hearts,” Mr. Fuentes said. “So this was, for me, very fascinating, this relationship with my two grannies — the two authors of my books, really…”