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Green thoughts at PEN World Voices

Video highlights from PEN’s “Writers on the Environment” event (with Collins, Franzen, Isegawa, Iyer, Mak, Marilynne Robinson, Roxana Robinson, Rushdie, Shteyngart, Teller, & Whitehead) are up.

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Kumar on post-colonial writing in a globalized world

Amitava Kumar sends word that he’ll be reading from Bombay-London-New York for his “Post-Colonial Writing in a Globalized World” talk with Ilija Trojanow at the Goethe-Institut tonight. The section he has in mind, which I read while preparing for the Branding & Freedom in the Market Economy event last month, considers representations of Ghandi. I’m posting it in context here . . .

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Canonical

Kelly Jane Torrance wonders why Wharton, Cather, and Powell — all great American novelists — are given a place in the canon only as a nod to diversity.

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Argentina’s naturalist writer

Was William Henry Hudson Argentina’s Thoreau? “We are still marching bravely on,” he wrote, “conquering Nature, but how weary and sad we are getting.”

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