For Terry Eagleton, writing is “exploratory.” “The act of writing is both a great delight to me in itself,” he explained in a recent interview on London’s Yale Books Blog, but it “also is constitutive of my thought.” As the author of more than forty books, which span the fields
Congratulations to Alison Bechdel, whose newest book, Are You My Mother?, publishes today. We can’t wait to read this book, and have been thrilled by the marvelous attention its author has gotten recently, including a New Yorker profile by Judith Thurman, a Time profile by Lev Grossman, a fabulous book
Open any form of news media and there are sacred texts everywhere. Republican frontrunners quote Bible verses, pundits debate the role of the Quran in Middle Eastern politics, and in the arts and entertainment section, one book always hovers over the Harry Potters and John Grishams as the number one
We have a secret to tell: no one won our quiz about Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books! There were so many writers, there were so many books on their shelves, even the smallest microcosm of 13 quick facts was jam-packed with untold stories. So, let’s compromise. We’ll post 3 of the
The Ides of March, George Clooney’s latest directorial turn, stars Ryan Gosling as a campaign manager in a hotly contested Democratic primary that evokes both recent and ancient history. The film, adapted from a 2008 play by the name of Farragut North, plays on memories of the past two presidential
There is no doubt that Harold Bloom is a brave man. Indeed, only a brave man can acknowledge in his most recent book that “disputes concerning the Bible have been murderous,” and then declare in an interview for the San Francisco Chronicle published a few months later that, “There is
Alberto Manguel delivers the Finzi-Contini Lecture at Yale University, entitled “Borges and the Impossibility of Writing”. He is introduced by Maria Menocal, director of the Whitney Humanities Center. An acclaimed anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, and editor, Manguel once served as a reader for Jorge Luis Borges and has been hailed