In "Hell-Heaven" with Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri's new story collection, "Unaccustomed Earth," was reviewed Sunday in our pages. Reviewer Lisa Fugard calls the book "a howl from the heart of a writer working at the height of her powers."

Lahiri, 40, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction with her debut collection, "Interpreter of Maladies," and followed it up with the bestselling book-turned-movie, "The Namesake." Her new collection includes the story "Hell-Heaven," which ran in the New Yorker in 2004. That same year she appeared at the New Yorker Festival; in this film clip, she reads from her story and answers audience questions.

Carolyn Kellogg

Safe passage, Robert Fagles

Classics scholar Robert Fagles' bestselling translations from the Greek and Latin reminded us, as Seamus Heaney did with his "Beowulf," of the continuing power and appeal of epic poems. We may feel sorry to lose so important a translator as Fagles, who died March 26 at age 74. Yet one can't help but see his passing in the context of his career-long preoccupation, in "The Odyssey" and "The Aeneid," with the necessity of journeys.

Good wishes and safe passage on your new travels, Mr. Fagles. Below are some words from a fellow student of Virgil that I think you'd appreciate.

The days that are past
And the others to come
Gathered, in the present.

For years and through the centuries
A surprise at every moment
In the knowledge we are still in life,
That living ever flows, always flowing,
Unexpected gift and pain
In the continuous whirl
of empty change.

Such in keeping with our fate
Is this journey I continue,
In the flash of an instant
Unearthing and inventing
Time from first to last,
Refugee like all the others
Who have been, who are, who are to come.

           Giuseppe Ungaretti  (translated by Andrew Frisardi)

Nick Owchar

The Shakespeare Bridge

People who might be tempted to think of L.A. as a not-all-that-literary city just don't know it well enough; literary landmarks are everywhere.

Between Silver Lake and Los Feliz, for example, the useful -- and lovely -- Shakespeare Bridge connects Franklin Avenue to St. George Street. But it's not just a bridge -- it's also Los Angeles' Cultural and Historical Monument No. 126.

Pseudonymous blogger Floyd B. Bariscale (who took the photo above as part of his project profiling all of L.A.'s landmarks, one by one) writes of the Shakespeare Bridge:

Completed in 1926, it stands thirty-feet wide and 230-feet long. It features Gothic arches and, at either end, two pair of what Gebhard and Winter, in "Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide," call “aedicules.”

The "aedicules" are the pretty pointy things; the gothic arches are here and here and here. As for its gothicness, the bridge appeared in the underrated 1991 film "Dead Again," a gothic thriller starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. One (unsubstantiated) rumor also places it in "The Wizard of Oz"; surely it's appeared in other films too.

But this is about its literariness: It's called the Shakespeare Bridge because ... well, that's actually a mystery. It just IS the Shakespeare Bridge, without any slips of prolixity or crossing the plain highway of talk. (That's from "The Merchant of Venice"; Shakespeare quotes make the Shakespeare Bridge that much more fun.)

Carolyn Kellogg

Kapuściński ... the poet?

Photo: AFP/Getty

By his own count, the late Ryszard Kapuściński covered 27 incidents of revolution, war and upheaval around the world -- and recorded much of it in such books as "The Soccer War," "The Shadow of the Sun" and "Imperium" before he died on Jan. 23, 2007. Many of his fans may be surprised to learn that the Polish journalist also wrote poetry -- although one might wonder when he possibly found the time.

Although there was much fanfare around the appearance of Kapuściński's final book, "Travels With Herodotus," which was published not long after his death, it's disappointing that "I Wrote Stone," now published in English for the first time by Biblioasis, has come out with not so much as a single trumpet sounding.

Translated by Diana Kuprel and Marek Kusiba, this slim volume gathers poetry Kapuściński wrote over 40 years. Slim, yes, but hardly insubstantial.

Big events -- such as the murder of the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba -- may have been treated lyrically in his prose, but Kapuściński's translators note that he believed poetry could "illuminate dimensions of human experience that otherwise would remain unknowable." These poems capture the moments between crises, impressions that carry a book-length argument in a few lines. "Magellan Reaches Tierra Del Fuego," for example, ends on this note of despair:

They stand gazing —
              they hope for paradise
and the caravel reaches the shore
and they see sand, stone and cliffs

a dead horizon

A thesis statement ...

The University of Iowa caused a bit of a dust-up recently by changing the terms for graduate theses -- to make them “open access,” available online, for free, to anyone. Students in the writing program, one of the country’s most prestigious, balked.

Seth Abramson, an Iowa MFA student in poetry, blogged that he didn’t intend to turn over "first North American serial rights to any creative work I should produce … [toward] the completion of an MFA thesis." (Yep, he used to be a lawyer.)

Author James Hynes, who has attended the Iowa writer’s workshop and taught there, also protested, noting: "The copy of my thesis in the Iowa Graduate Library … is the final draft of my first published novel, 'The Wild Colonial Boy.' "

Eventually, the issue was resolved: The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (sorry, registration is required for the article) that the university will not publish theses from students in the writing programs as open-access documents.

Not all college students are so lucky. Many top film schools -- including USC's -- hold the rights to their students’ final projects. George Lucas is rumored to have resorted to stealing the negative to his short film “Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB” from the school. That worked out OK for him -– it became the basis for his first feature, “THX 1138,” starring Robert Duvall. But the university now makes sure to keep closer tabs on its students' work.

Carolyn Kellogg

A "golden" prequel from Philip Pullman

Early next month, Philip Pullman will publish "Once Upon a Time in the North" -- a sort of prequel to the trilogy "His Dark Materials." The Guardian has an exclusive excerpt of the new book, which presents a young Lee Scoresby, the trilogy's heroic aeronaut, seeking work in the Arctic town of Novy Odense. Scoresby sees polar bears scavenging the streets: That's a far cry from the once-great bear-kings of Svalbard, someone tells him. He also learns of their armor and of the possiblity of an anti-bear campaign taking place in the region. Pullman's narrative ease is fully on display as Scoresby settles himself among the town's denizens.

Like Pullman's 2003 book, "Lyra’s Oxford," set two years after the trilogy ends, "Once Upon a Time in the North" isn't the follow-up novel that so many of Pullman's trilogy fans are expecting. (That one, Pullman has said, will be called "The Book of Dust.") This is a short story -- complete with a board game, the publisher says. However rich in meaning and implications, "Once Upon a Time in the North" will only make readers eager for what is yet to come. It will be published by Random House on April 8.

Nick Owchar

'The Shock Doctrine' as video

Naomi Klein's newest book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," has received lots of attention, including a nomination for this year's L.A. Times Book Prize for current interest. Check out this video made (by Alfonso Cuarón) for "The Shock Doctrine."

In the six months that it has been on the Internet, Cuarón's video has made the rounds, garnering nearly 1,200 comments on YouTube.

Klein explains that she sent her finished manuscript to Cuarón "because I adore his films" and that the future world he created in his film "Children of Men" captured the present-day she was seeing in disaster zones in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

"I was hoping he would send me a quote for the book jacket and instead he pulled together this amazing team of artists -- including Jonás Cuarón who directed and edited -- to make 'The Shock Doctrine' short film. It was one of those blessed projects where everything felt fated."

Carolyn Kellogg

Digging Dracula

One of the perks of grad school is that I wind up rereading books I first encountered, say, 20 years ago. You know, the ones that have gone into into the fuzzy "Oh, I read that" file in your head. My latest rediscovery is "Dracula."

Sure, I read it way back when. Sure, I've since seen many movie versions, including "Nosferatu" (pictured), "Andy Warhol's Dracula," "Love at First Bite," "Blackula" and who knows what else. Creepy guy, pointy teeth, he vants to suck your blood, yadda yadda.

But that Bram Stoker was some writer. And his "Dracula" is one delicious book.

The entire premise plays out in 50 pages, which ends with the narrator left for dead. Horror! Tension! What on earth can happen next? Where is there to go? Suddenly, a new narrator, and several epistolary/journaling voices come into play. There is more horror. And more! Creepy bug-eating Renfield! A head gets sliced off! Where to go after that? Fingernail-chewing tension! More horror! A chase!

I had thought Truman Capote a genius for playing out all the horror and evil of "In Cold Blood" in its first 50 pages yet still maintaining a terrible tension throughout the rest of the book. If you tell me that Capote had read "Dracula" circa 1964, I wouldn't be surprised. Bram Stoker did it first.

So please, I beg you: Don't stop at the the Gary Oldman/Winona Ryder/Francis Ford Coppola version, or even the Mexican "Dracula Saga" out today in special-edition DVD -- the true and magnificent "Dracula," as written by Bram Stoker, must be read to be believed appreciated.

Carolyn Kellogg

The young and the published: Some advice

Do you have a book in you? Imagine: Late nights pecking furiously on the keyboard with a glass of red wine by your side, animated conversations with your editor and agent and, eventually, the final, beautiful product: a hardcover book with your name on the cover. Then your publisher sends you on a book tour where you sign books, do readings, hobnob with literary types and generally feel very writerly. Dream on, baby!

When my non-fiction book "My Start-Up Life" was published last year, I became the latest first-time author mugged by reality. Here’s how it works for most. Before you begin writing, your idea is massaged to be as commercially viable as possible even at the cost of artistic merit. After it comes out, you’re expected to get in your car and flog the heck of out your book on your own nickel. At every stage in-between, a gritty reality demolishes the romantic conception of what it means to be an author.

New uncertainties and financial strains are partly to blame for the dog-eat-dog attitude that’s become the status quo. Technologies like Google Books and the Amazon Kindle are causing heartburn in publishers. Government studies showing plunging reading rates raise the question whether the younger generation--my generation--will still be reading print books when they’re adults. These points of stress create an understandably tumultuous situation for all involved.

Yet, even after all the ups-and-downs, I’m still happy I wrote a book. There are indeed good reasons to write upon dead trees, even if the process is not as it’s been mythologized. Americans still buy and read books. Millions of ‘em. There’s probably no more intimate exchange of ideas than someone quietly sitting and reading your prose for several hours. There’s also probably no more credible way to establish authority on a topic (non-fiction) or demonstrate legitimate creative ability (fiction). And, if you love to read and buy books, there’s no feeling quite like seeing your own book in a bookstore for the first time.

So if you’re one of the 81% of Americans who’d answer "yes" to my opening question--do you have a book in you?--go ahead, take the plunge. But feel no shame in bailing once you see what you’re up against. The smartest writers in the world, in my opinion, are snuggled in their bedrooms, wearing pajamas, with a glass of red wine by their side, writing a blog.

Ben Casnocha

Ben Casnocha is a student at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of "My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley" published by Jossey-Bass.

Hi, Moby-Dick here

(photo credit: Yoshikazu Tsuno/Getty)

Dear Publisher,

I believe that I have grounds to revise Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" to more accurately represent what the author originally intended.

Based on research into various documents previously unknown, I have made the startling discovery that Melville intended the book to be told almost entirely from the point of view of the whale. It stands to reason that, had the modern concept of memoir been available in his era, Melville would have certainly changed the title of the book from “Moby-Dick, or The Whale” to “Moby-Dick: A Memoir.” Animals are wonderful storytellers, as has been pointed out about Matt Haig recently in the pages of Book Review.

When we meet, I can give you the rich amount of material upon which I support this drastic (I know) change to an undeniable literary classic. But I don’t believe it will lose its position as a result; in fact, it will be enhanced as such a restoration will give the world a better version of what Melville had wanted.

I count myself among a worthy line of editors—among them Matthew Bruccoli on Thomas Wolfe, Noel Polk on Robert Penn Warren and Michael A. Lofaro on James Agee (nevermind what Nina Revoyr says about him in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Book Review)—who have helped artists to realize what they were trying to say. Writers, in truth, are often so swept up in the "artist thing" that they forget what they're doing. Editors' feet, however, are firmly grounded.

As I said, I am near to completing my restoration of the text. I have also suggested cutting several sections of material, for example:

The section on cetology -– almost certainly these were notes which the writer used for research, not as part of the narrative.

The brief early section about the mariner Bulkington -– clearly a false start.

I have also fixed language in several places where the author unaccountably slips into dialects that muddle the passages’ meaning.

I look forward to hearing from you at your soonest opportunity. Until then, call me

Ishmael

Nick Owchar