At Salon, Laura Miller interviews the literary theorist Franco Moretti, whose methods are largely quantitative and whose work avoids focusing on a few universally approved texts. “I’m interested in understanding the culture at large, rather than just its best results,” he explains. “I have no doubt that canonical books are best—although we can spend days arguing what ‘best’ means. But it’s not enough for me to understand that. I want to understand the broader conventions, the field of attempts and failures, hoping that that may tell us something significant about the culture we live in or that others have lived in.”
Full Stop appreciatively reviews Benjamin Kunkel’s play, Buzz, just released by n+1 books.
The Associated Press has issued a new style guideline: no more abbreviations of state names in stories.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences inducts 204 new fellows into its ranks. The new fellows include the novelists Annie Proulx and John Irving, the short-story writer George Saunders, and the historian Jill Lepore.
Vice News reporter Simon Ostrovsky, who was detained in eastern Ukraine, was released on Thursday.
Two booksellers have unveiled what they claim is Shakespeare’s annotated dictionary. The scanned book is available for readers to peruse online (once they sign up for the privilege, that is).
