Conundrum Press

Tuesday morning lit roundup

April 22nd, 2014  |  Published in Blog

Happy Earth Day! Find out what sparked the first Earth Day in 1970.

The Lyrid meteor shower is happening this week. It peaked this morning at dawn, but if you missed that, head out this evening (morning?) around 3 a.m. (away from streetlights) to watch 10-20 meteors per hour.

Vladimir Nabokov was born this day in 1899. Read his list on what makes a good reader.

Highly esteemed Latin American magical realist writer Gabriel García Márquez died Thursday, April 17 in his home in Mexico City. At the memorial ceremony, a “flurry of paper yellow butterflies” were released. “Yellow was García Márquez’s favourite colour and the author was regularly seen with a yellow rose in his lapel. Yellow butterflies also trail one of the characters in his masterpiece One Hundred Year’s of Solitude.”

In his New York Times essay, “Magic in Service of Truth,” Salman Rushdie talks of the great importance of  García Márquez’s work with magic realism, which many people misunderstand: “It’s because the magic in magic realism has deep roots in the real, because it grows out of the real and illuminates it in beautiful and unexpected ways, that it works.” He writes:

We live in an age of invented, alternate worlds. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Rowling’s Hogwarts, the dystopic universe of “The Hunger Games,” the places where vampires and zombies prowl: These places are having their day. Yet in spite of the vogue for fantasy fiction, in the finest of literature’s fictional microcosms there is more truth than fantasy. In William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha, R. K. Narayan’s Malgudi and, yes, the Macondo of Gabriel García Márquez, imagination is used to enrich reality, not to escape from it.”

Read García Márquez’s Paris Review Art of Fiction interview here.

Colorado Poet Laureate David Mason will be reading at the Central library Friday, April 25, 3-5 PM

Aaand… Speaking of Poet Laureate events… On May 3, current (David Mason) and past (Chris Ransick) Colorado Poet Laureates will participate in an epic poetry smack down! Sponsored by Book Bar’s First Saturday poetry seriesHors d’euvres and drink specials for reading attendees from 5:00-6:00 PM. Reading begins at 6:00 PM.

 

 

Tags: ,

Comments are closed.

Your Book Orders

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 19 other subscribers


Share This Site

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Upcoming Events

Search Our Site


loading
%d bloggers like this: