Guest Post: Rebecca’s love affair with Irish lit

In this guest post, our book loving coworker, Rebecca Yeager, declares her love for the literature of the Emerald Isle. Be sure to check out Thomas Bartlett’s Ireland: A History, out this month. Rebecca learned a few things in IRELAND and asked, “did you know that in 1902, a group of British Iraelites began illegal excavations at Tara in search of the Ark of the Covenant, and where stopped in part by through the efforts of several Irishmen, including Y.B. Yeats?”

Leonard Cassuto on The Today Show

“A little nonsense, now and then, is relished by the wisest men.” Author Leonard Cassuto provides insight into famous quotes on The Today Show.

The paradox in defining the City of Angels

The New York Journal of Books looks at the authors of Los Angeles attempt to define America’s new second city: is it a palm-shaded paradise with great weather or a vapid silicone desert of asphalt?

Taking a Page from… The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles

Kevin McNamara, editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles, will be speaking tonight at Skylight Books in L.A. (or Hell-Lay as LA Weekly’s Michael Simmons calls it). He’ll be joined by contributors William Alexander McClung, Mark Shiel, Bill Mohr, Scott Bryson, and Eric Avila to celebrate the book’s launch. Full details and presenter bios available here. Below, McNamara talks landmarks, the symbolism of Los Angeles and stories of the Southland… a sprawling region made of words and designed by myth, constantly recreated by the literature that defines it.

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Introduction: Landmarks

Kevin R. McNamara[i]

A good deal about California does not, on its own preferred terms, add up.

Joan Didion, Where I Was From (2003)

Defining the geographic extent of Los Angeles is the first challenge for anyone who would study its literature. Concentration defines New York, where even Brooklynites refer to Manhattan as “the city.” LA is defined by sprawl. Much of iconic LA, from the beaches of Baywatch to the streets of Beverly Hills, 90210, lies beyond the city limits. The larger Los Angeles County still fails to encompass Disneyland, Fontana (Mike Davis’s “Junkyard of Dreams”), and Huntington Beach, whose pier is “one of the constituent monuments of the surfing life.” [ii] As a literary subject, however, Los Angeles is less a city, county, or “metropolitan statistical area” than a state of being (of grace, fear, emergency, or exception, depending on whom one reads) anchored in the area south of the Tehachapi Mountains, north of San Diego, west of the desert, and squarely in the collective imagination of utopia, dystopia, and, more recently, the urban future. A tour of some of mythic LA’s landmark features will introduce our subject.

Celebrating Bloomsday and Irish Culture Worldwide

Happy Bloomsday 2010!

For the uninitiated, Bloomsday is a celebration of James Joyce’s magnum opus Ulysses, a novel in which the events all take place over the course of one day: June 16th. From Dublin to New York, Genoa to Brazil, Bloomsday is commemorated as the world over pays tribute through performances of Ulysses, visits to prominent places in the novel (if you’re lucky enough to be in Dublin!), and performances of Irish music. There’s even a Twitter adaptation of Ulysses, and a “Which Ulysses Character Are You?” Quiz.

Bloomsday is also a celebration of James Joyce’s own life and literary achievements – a reflection of how heavily the book was informed by Joyce’s personal experience. In Saturday’s Irish Times, Dictionary of Irish Biography contributor Bridget Hourican charts a who’s who of characters from Dublin’s most famous novel – full analysis can be found here.

But what about James Joyce? Who was he and where does the saga of Ulysses fit in his life story?