So far as I can tell, the scientific study of literature (fiction, narrative) began in the early years of the 20th century with two groups of linguists, in Moscow and St Petersburg, who became known—by way of a sneer by the Bolsheviks—as the Formalists. [...] The group’s goal was to study literature as such, scientifically, and not treat it as a species of political moralizing.
You know how sometimes a fifteen minute break from writing can turn into a three hour Facebook / RSS Feed / blog reading sinkhole of procrastination? Well that was May for your humble editor.
Although I hadn’t yet learned about saying no to the patriarchy, I was too shy and awkward to be a princess, and I ditched the plan of becoming one altogether when I read LM Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. I read the Anne books so many times that I felt as at home in turn-of-the-century Prince Edward Island as in 1980s suburban north London.
Samantha Ellis/The Guardian/Observer
In a number of experiments it has been found that people experience pleasure when a liked character behaves well and succeeds. People experience frustration and anxiety when a disliked character behaves badly and succeeds. If, in a thriller with a confusing plot you wonder which character is the real baddie, he’s the one who acts with disdain to an underling.
Anyone who teaches literature knows that it can be really rewarding but also extremely challenging especially when you hear “poetry sucks” at least a few times a semester. Upon hearing negative poetry talk in the classroom I ask students what it is we use to mark the most important times—typically weddings, funerals, grads, births—in our lives.
Kerri Cull/The Book Fridge
Okay Booknet, you can stop throwing things anytime you want. I don’t really know if you can vilify them, or not, but I know they have Google alert because I’ve written about them before. Fine, I get it, agents scour Booknet to see how crappy my sales are and then sign some canoe paddling Canadian forest ranger who stubbed their toe in Manitoba and was lost in the woods for four hours. I get it. I’m not anti-Booknet, I just thought I’d be relevant.
Within each of us, too, there is a little world—an inner world—and the purpose of that, too, is to reflect the big world. Sometimes a director comes along whose films, by a double reflection, help us understand how our inner world reflects the big world.
In this fascinating book on both novel writing in general and the writing of his own novels in particular, Pamuk devotes his second chapter entirely to how fiction can be be both real and imaginary. From the reader’s point of view, Pamuk takes the idea of the naive to stand for what has been been perceived, in an autobiographical way.
Beside the obvious function of deferring things uncomfortable to think through (including the denial of complex motives), relegating something to the realm of the unspeakable plays the other obvious role of reducing social friction on things likely to create discord.
Kristen Valentine Cadieux/OnFiction
Marie d’Origny, deputy director of the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, accused Rolling Stones guitarist and best-selling memoirist Keith Richards of murdering her plant.
Meredith Blake/The New Yorker
