Happy Father’s Day! To honor the occasion, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite literary dads. Some of these guys we love; some we’re intrigued by; others we just have to shake our heads at; but all of them are remarkable. This list is by no means exhaustive. We hope that you enjoy our selection, and then perhaps share your own favorites with us in the comments below.
For a contemporary novelist, becoming a household name is not easy.A Man Booker Prize (of which Ian McEwan has been a recipient) may not do it. Nor, indeed, may a prominent spot on TIME’s list of the 50 best British authors since 1945.Surely, then, we must attribute Ian McEwan’s name recognition at least partially to luck, and more than a little bit to a well-respected film adaptation of his critically acclaimed novel Atonement (2001).But a reputation like McEwan’s can’t be built on luck alone.Rather, it must be built on a strong foundation of literary acumen, pieced together, in McEwan’s case, from a well-trained ear for language and an uncommon sense of urgency.It is lucky not just for Ian McEwan but for the community of readers that such well wrought fictions reach a wide audience. Here are five interesting facts about the acclaimed author.
“A classic (is) something everybody wants to have read but nobody wants to read.”
-Mark Twain, 1900
It is, perhaps, a little ironic that a remark Mark Twain made in reference to Paradise Lost (1667), a text that was by then some 200 years old, can be deployed to describe a book that is barely pushing forty. At the same time, it seems fitting that two works that so poetically, and controversially, dramatize events from the religious past should be neighbors in one paragraph. Indeed, one could argue that Salman Rushdie’s famously controversial novel, The Satanic Verses (1988) has more in common with John Milton’s epic poem than most. The fact remains, however, that many if not most are more familiar with Iran’s condemnation of the book as heretical than with the book itself.
Shopping for antiquarian books in Buenos Aires is like something out of a dream. Every corner of the city, it seems, has an antiquarian bookshop on it, filled with glorious paper wonders. And given that this city is, like New York, one that never sleeps, some of these stores stay open well into the later hours of the evening, particularly on Avenida Corrientes. If you love looking through old books and ephemera (and if you can read even a small bit of Spanish), you must — you absolutely must — plan a visit to Argentina. It just might be a book collector’s dream come true.
In his 1964 novel The Dalkey Archive, Irish satirist Brian O'Nolan (known better by his noms de plume Flann O’Brien and Myles na Gopaleen) envisions a world where whiskey can be aged to perfection in a matter of days and a mad scientist named de Selby poses a serious existential threat to humanity.Almost entirely separate from these imaginings comes a scene in which the late literary behemoth James Joyce is alive and well and working as a bartender near Dalkey.Bewildered by the author’s sudden appearance, O’Nolan’s protagonist, Mick, asks him about Ulysses (1922). Joyce responds, “I don’t want to talk about that exploit.I took the idea to be a sort of practical joke.”
Where can you find the largest archive of Boris Pasternak material in the world? The Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University holds this vast collection, where researchers have the opportunity to peruse documents contained in 156 manuscript boxes and 23 oversize boxes, not to mention videotapes and phonotapes. While access to specific items will require permission from the archivist and a trip to Palo Alto, digital use copies of some of the materials are available. The collection spans from 1878 to 2013.
At first thought, it seems ludicrous that any author — any person who depends on lovers of books and knowledge, really — would condemn formal education. In an age when more and more authors are cultivated in an MFA program, you'd assume to find only champions of education. After all, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Flannery O’Connor all passed through an MFA program, and plenty more, like Zadie Smith and Joyce Carol Oates, have taught in one. Despite the firm bond between writers and academic institutions, there are some authors who can’t help but criticize formal education.
Fathers play such an important role in literature. From the ideal, like Atticus Finch, to more questionable characters like King Lear, all are memorable in their own right. To honor fathers of all kinds, we've put together a fun, bookish quiz. Who is your literary father figure? Answer these seven questions to find out.
It may (or may not) shock some of you to know that Alice Munro, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, was the first Canadian writer to achieve Nobel laureate-status. Still others, while in the process of reading these sentences, may be equally shocked to realize that they can hardly name any Canadian authors. Munro, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje; for many the list stops there. Though Canada’s most populous cities are often mere hours of travel from the literary hubs of the lower 48, a deep awareness of our northern neighbor’s literary output rarely seems to make it through customs.
This month, we were treated to American Craft Beer Week, an annual celebration of the craft beer movement across the country. For seven days, craft beer lovers, brewers, critics and writers – yes, there are many wordsmiths and literature-minded folks putting pen to paper in the name of craft beer – took part in tastings, special beer releases, panel discussions and other gatherings.
