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"…the release of the new film is one of the truly cheering events of the Christmas season. Cheering because it suggests that what the boys in the quarterlies used to call ‘a continuity of culture’ persists, that old stories can still be the best stories. We insist that this is so to our students and our kids often enough, but only when a big entertainment conglomerate is willing to make a box-office bet on it… does it seem truly so."
— Adam Gopnik on the persistent greatness of “Les Miserables”: http://nyr.kr/VljfPQ(Source: newyorker.com)
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"Most of us want extraordinary things, after a while, to quit being extraordinary—to end. The stone fell in the water. The ripples ran. Now they should stop. The surface should be smooth again."
— Joan Acocella considers why many of the world’s best novels, from “David Copperfield” and “Wuthering Heights,” to “Huckleberry Finn,” have bad endings: http://nyr.kr/UVcXaA(Source: newyorker.com)
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Cartoon by Ariel Molvig. For more: http://nyr.kr/UXbmyE
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Next month, “Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac” will collect Mac covers from artists like Lee Ranaldo and J Mascis, Lykke Li, the Kills, and MGMT. One of the most hypnotic tracks on the tribute is “Storms,” which originally appeared on the gnomic 1981 album “Tusk” and is covered here by Matt Sweeney and Bonnie (Prince) Billy. We are pleased to offer this exclusive preview of that song: http://nyr.kr/NjiFjL
(Source: newyorker.com / The New Yorker)
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Are Rereadings Better Readings?
“One cannot read a book: one can only reread it,” Nabokov said. Book Bench contributor Nathaniel Stein thought of that line while reading “On Rereading,” Patricia Meyer Spacks’s charming and strange blend of memoir, literary criticism, and scientific treatise.
For Nabokov, another reading was always constructive. But for Spacks, rereading—though satisfying for pure literary analysis—can reveal unwelcome truths about our past selves, and cause disenchantment—in the most literal sense—with the books we used to love.
What books have you reread? Have you experienced re-readings as better readings? Tell us below or photo reply with an image of you with your most-read book.
