Michael Cunningham on James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, Charles Simic’s Lazy Summers, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
7.16.13

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:

Michael Cunningham considers two classic novels in tandem—James Joyce’s Ulysses and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. (Guardian)

Bulgarian poet Edvin Sugarev began a hunger strike three weeks ago in protest of his nation’s government. (Sofia News Agency)

Author Lee Siegel considers the fate of humanities programs in American universities. (Wall Street Journal)

Poet Charles Simic compares the lazy summers of his youth to his present moment: “Indolence requires patience—to lie in the sun, for instance, day after day—and I have none left.” (New York Review of Books)

From Herman Melville’s grave to Willa Cather’s Nebraska homeplace, Flavorwire lists the literary places everyone should visit.

In a ten-part series, actress Adjoa Andoh reads Zora Neale Hurston’s famed 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. (BBC Radio 4)

Jesse Montgomery recounts witnessing Jonathan Franzen attempting to check out films from UC Santa Cruz’s McHenry Library. (Full Stop)