One Would Think I Advocated Sheer Perversity, Instead Of Merely Saying Merely Natural Things

Aja Gabel and Jessica Swope document D.H. Lawrence’s relationship with the Virginia Quarterly Review during the journal’s early days. Much of VQR’s archives are now accessible online including several pieces by Lawrence:

Great Novels For The Cost Of A Pack Of Cigarettes

Anne Trubek reports for Smithsonian about the genesis of Penguin Books, the imprint that made literature affordable for the masses seventy-five years ago, and the genius of publisher Allen Lane:

Lane’s paperbacks were cheap. They cost two and a half pence, the same as ten cigarettes, the publisher touted. Volume was key to profitability; Penguin had to sell 17,000 copies of each book to break even….

Crawled Over Coconut Logs And Corpses In The Coral Sand

As backyard grills fire up, swimming pools unlock their gates, and families head to the shore to mark the beginning of Summer, here’s a song to mark the real meaning of Memorial Day. From their album Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat, here’s Carbon Leaf with “The War Was in Color”:

The Affiliations Between Wax And Mortality Seem Intuitive And Easy To Trace

Rachael Weaver examines wax and its popular use in representing both life and death for Meanjin Quarterly — from Madame Tussaud and the convicted felons that looked forward to the idea of being immortalized in wax to the history of waxworks attractions in Australia.

Next To Humanity, Nationality Is Trivial

With a little bit of luck and one big goal, Joe Gaetjens led the U.S. to a surprise upset over England in the World Cup 60 years ago. It was the goal heard around the world — well, everywhere but America that is. But 14 years later, Gaetjens was abducted in his native Haiti and was missing until confirmed dead until 1972. Alexander Wolff explores the mystery of “The Hero Who Vanished” for Sports Illustrated:

The Connection Between War And Writing Is As Old As Literature Itself

Michael David Lukas looks at the next generation of American war literature for VQR, and examines some of the challenges today’s veterans face when they attempt to put their experience into words.

After nearly a decade of US soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems reasonable to ask: where is the literature of our current conflicts? Brian Turner’s poetry collection Here, Bullet, garnered praise when it came out in 2005, and a number of veterans have published memoirs (Melia Meichelbock’s In the Company of Soldiers, Nathaniel Fick’s One Bullet Away, and John Crawford’s The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell, to name a few). But aside from these and a smattering of shorter works, the literature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has yet to emerge.

He Lived the Life of a Minnow in a Shoal of Pike

In this month’s The Believer, Lev Grossman writes about Leonard Woolf’s career in the British civil service, and takes a closer look at the work of an associate of Woolf’s — B.J. Dutton.

We know a lot about Woolf. He couldn’t have realized it then (though he probably had his suspicions), but his destiny lay with the inner circle of the ruling literary caste of the twentieth century. He was a harbinger of modernism, the school of Virginia Woolf and Joyce and Faulkner and Hemingway. But who was B. J. Dutton? There was no word for him in 1905, but we have one now: he was a nerd avant la lettre. And he was a harbinger, too, in his tiny, ineffectual way, of another of the twentieth century’s dominant literary traditions: fantasy.

Click here to read the story.

Between the Old Testament and the New Testament, I Found the Slave Records

As the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War and the end of slavery draws near, The Richmond Times-Dispatch has started a feature series to examine how the former capital of the Confederacy continues to struggle with its complicated past. Today’s installment tells the story of Maria Rippe, wife of Museum of the Confederacy’s first director, who found her ancestors’ slave records while flipping through a family Bible six years ago.

Slavery in the family is no surprise for white Virginians with deep roots in the state, but finding such a stark record of bondage left Rippe feeling “too many emotions to name. . . . Ashamed, yes, and embarrassed.”

Click here to read the story and click here to read a companion article about Marcus Butler, who is descended from the slaves owned by Rippe’s ancestors.

Rippe is also the author of a family history, The Tinsley Family of Totomoi.

Thin and Open as the Pulse of Conscience, You Put a Flower in a Rifle’s Mouth

Shortly after the tragedy, Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote “Bullets and Flowers” – dedicated to Allison Krause. Yevtushenko was inspired by the story of how Krause, the day before, had placed a flower in the barrel of an Ohio National Guardsman’s rifle and said, “Flowers are better than bullets.”

Click here to read the poem.

American Society Had Come to Resemble a Shattered Mirror Still in Its Frame

Today is the 40th anniversary of the May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State University. The Ohio National Guard opened fire upon unarmed college students. Shots rang out for 13 seconds that day, killing Allison Krause,Jeffrey Miller, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer. Many writers, poets, songwriters, filmmakers, and other artists have tried to make sense of the tragedy over the years. Here is an excerpt from Philip Caputo’s book 13 Seconds: A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings, published five years ago on the tragedy’s 35th anniversary.

Click here to read the excerpt.