Patrick Mortensen, former Sugar Land, TX resident and fellow Brooklyn transplant, offered some context for my great-granddad’s philanderings after I posted about his predilection for dragging the family to construction sites and then abandoning them to shack up with someone new. “Based on the pretty faces I remember from 63 years or so after Zone was there,” said Mortensen, “he . . .
A new translation of Kafka makes his stories more immediate, but does it also underscore the shabbiness of many translations of recent works? (Via.)
In a previously unpublished defense of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain argues that the poet’s obscenities are nothing compared to what you’ll find in the classics. (Via.)
Hellenic Studies scholars are using a robot arm to scan the oldest known copy of Homer’s Iliad, with an eye toward creating a 3-D replica of the manuscript. (Via.)
Flannery O’Connor urged Betty Hester to forego plot in favor of characters that come alive: “Nothing you write will lack meaning because the meaning is in you.”