“To sum up, my dear Guy,” wrote Flaubert, “you must beware of melancholy.” Barnes on de Maupassant. (Via.)
Reunification reads: Germany Then & Now; Granta’s Krauts!; the NYRB’s 1989!; and dissenting perspectives on The Lives of Others.
“Fuck that with vigour and from a strange direction.” A.L. Kennedy will have none of your novel-is-dead debates. (Via.)
The assignment: redesign Vladimir Nabokov’s book covers, all 21 of them. The result: 21 designers, and, in a nod to the author’s passion for butterfly collection, 21 specimen boxes. See also: Michael Bierut’s eulogy for designer Fred Marcellino, previously at Design Observer, and Nabokov Under Glass.