A professor at the University of Montana has uncovered what he believes to be a previously unknown work by Coleridge. What makes this even more interesting is the fact that the work is a verse translation of Goethe's "Faust". Read more about the story of the discovery here.
Speaking of Goethe, ever wondered why he doesn't get more recognition as one of the greats, especially in the English-speaking world?
Even if I weren't a member of the Litblog Co-op, I would be highly recommending this quarter's Read This! title. Head over to the LBC site and check it out and set aside a good chunk of time to sit down with this book. It's a long one but so worth your time. Trust me.
The New York Observer's Chris Schott takes a look at one of Jack Kerouac's favorite New York dive bars, The West End.
Denver's Westword helps you out with a map of the city's literary landmarks (and manages to publish one of the worst "artistic" renderings of Kerouac I've ever seen.) Also in Westword, Amy Haimerl takes a look at Kerouac's first trip to the Mile High City:
It was just ten days, 240 hours, 14,400 minutes, but it forever intertwined the destinies of Kerouac and the Queen City of the Plains. No longer just a cowtown, now an epicenter of the Beat Movement. Something, someplace. Producer of an American original that only a post-war America could embrace. A place to search for identity and meaning. The magnetic pull of 5,280 feet above sea level sucking back the Massachusetts boy in body and mind, covering him with the sense of possibility.
The 2007 Conference on Southern Literature kicks off Thursday in Chattanooga.
A scientific study shows that winning the Nobel Prize could add a few years to your life. The researchers claim that while their study focused on the Nobel winners, this could very well extend to folks who win other prestigious prizes. No word on if winning the Quill actually decreased your lifespan.
It didn't seem like the study compared Nobel prize winners to their specific peers - that is, people with similar economic and educational backgrounds. I would guess that the life expectancy of richer whiter more-educated americans and europeans is probably higher than the national averages, and similar to the prize-winners' data.
and (just another humble and ignorant opinion), I never really liked reading Goethe very much. I always thought he must be better in German :}
Posted by: tom | January 21, 2007 at 11:49 PM