Essay “Literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies,” Roberto Bolaño, who enjoyed accruing enemies in the pantheon of Latin American letters, writes in the short story “Meeting with Enrique Lihn” (New Yorker, December 22, 2008): except for a few classic authors (just a few), and every day I had to walk through that minefield, where any false move could be fatal, with only the poems of Archilochus to guide me. It’s like that for all young writers. There comes a time when you have no support, not even from friends, forget about mentors, and there’s no one to give you a hand; publication, prizes, and grants are reserved for the others, the ones who said “Yes, sir,” over and over, or those who praised the literary mandarins, a never-ending horde distinguished only by their aptitude for discipline and punishment—nothing escapes them and they forgive nothing. Aptitude for discipline and punishment Bolaño himself had aplenty, too. And in spite of his precarious health, he had stamina. At a young age, he had made up his mind he would die. Who cared if he annoyed others? His mission, as is clear from The Savage Detectives (1998), was to upend that tradition, to take it by the neck and expose its platitudes. What is the use of sacred cows if not to be desecrated? Indeed, every tradition needs an enfant terrible, maybe more than one. When was the last time a rabble-rouser came along in Latin American literature? As Bolaño put it in... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-28 21:05:10 UTC ]
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Fictional Translations: Pablo Neruda’s “Oda al actor,” by Ilan Stavans Poetry [email protected] Mon, 06/26/2023 - 13:48 Photo by throgers / FlickrIn what follows, I have created three heteronyms to render Pablo Neruda’s “Oda al actor” into English.... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2023-06-26 18:48:50 UTC ]
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Essay Photo by Miko Guziuk / Unsplash In his newest book, What Is American Literature? (Oxford University Press, 2022), award-winning cultural commentator, translator, and editor Ilan Stavans, the publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-02 19:59:22 UTC ]
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Interviews Since 2015, award-winning Restless Books publisher Ilan Stavans has been immersed in bringing the literary classics to new audiences through Restless Classics. These editions come with introductions by prominent diverse writers from around... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-05-12 15:41:23 UTC ]
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The Restless Books publisher, and creator of the just-announced Prize for New Immigrant Writing, said he hopes the literary honor will help dispel negative stereotypes of immigrants. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-08-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Antoine-François-Jean Claudet, [Multiple Exposures of the Moon] (1846–52), daguerreotype, 2019.47, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel / Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Queer... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-01 20:37:36 UTC ]
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Known as one of his country’s foremost intellectuals, he also presided over the influential publishing house Adelphi Edizioni. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-08-02 11:32:57 UTC ]
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The Pontas Literary & Film Agency and author J J Bola are partnering to create a mentoring prize for unagented, unpublished, under-represented writers. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-02 23:50:57 UTC ]
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Mike Gayle’s Half A World Away (Hodder & Stoughton, 2019) has been optioned for television by Genesius Pictures and Tantrum Films with actress Michelle Collins attached. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-17 04:01:47 UTC ]
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Elton John, Rick Ross and Liz Phair have written frank accounts of celebrity life. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2019-11-13 18:25:08 UTC ]
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Writers including J J Bola and Rachel Seiffert have been awarded grants by the Society of Authors in its latest round of funding to support works in progress. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-08-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Italian investigative journalist and writer Roberto Saviano is returning to Pan Macmillan to publish his first two novels, about children's gangs patrolling the streets of Naples for the mafia. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-06-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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An important riposte to digital culture, these essays by the Italian publisher and author argue that a publisher’s list is a literary work in its own rightThis collection of essays by the Italian author and publisher Roberto Calasso, translated by Richard Dixon, is a paean to publishing. Calasso... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Macmillan has acquired an autobiography by “one of the greatest boxers who ever lived” in a six-figure deal. Roberto Duran, nicknamed Hands of Stone, held four world titles at four different weights and fought boxers including Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler. Macmillan... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-04-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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For eight years, the journalist Roberto Saviano has faced constant threat of death for exposing the secrets of the Naples mafia in his book Gomorrah. Is the price of life under armed guard too much for a writer to pay?As a young writer growing up in Caserta, a suburb of Naples, I felt myself... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-01-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A new anthology explores the poems and illuminates the personal struggles of the late writer.As busy as Roberto Bolaño's afterlife has been — he's published 19 books in English since his death in 2003 — his time on Earth was even busier. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-07-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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