Romance Novels as Respite
Alyssa Rosenberg writes on “Another year, another man who is utterly horrified to discover just how many American women read romance novels.” (via @igallupd)
“The Wayward World of Wuxia”
“While the 1950s were considered a tumultuous period of history for the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong was undergoing an incredible revitalization of literature and cinema, a period informally known as the Golden Age of Wuxia (武 侠), or martial arts fantasy.” Terence Hsieh has more on wuxia, wuxia novels and wuxia novelists at The Word Of […]
Heart of Darkness, A Drawing For Every Page
Tin House has published an edition of Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness illustrated by Matt Kish, an interesting follow-up to Kish’s project, Moby-Dick In Pictures; One Drawing For Every Page. See more of Kish’s work here.
“Out of Body”
“As a young stay-at-home father, I gravitated toward Virago Modern Classics because they illuminated the ordinary domestic life to which I was growing accustomed, without becoming sentimental or losing sight of the broader human concerns and higher aspirations of their female characters….They couldn’t help seeing that this world […]
Art, Guilt and Intellectual Insecurity
Jennifer Szalai and Adam Sternbergh argue for removing the guilt from “guilty pleasures.” And in reading Eleanor Catton’s recent essay about the perception of literary elitism, Laura Miller considers intellectual insecurity in the literary world: “You can find it among fans of easy-to-read commercial fiction who insist (on […]
“The Fleming Files”
At Teleport City, The Gutter‘s own Keith examines Ian Fleming’s historical and fictional lives in espionage. “There were many British celebrities who dabbled to some degree or other in intelligence work during the war: Fleming, of course, but also entertainer Noel Coward[,] occult fiction author Dennis Wheatley, even […]
The Cultural Gutter 