An opinion piece on Slate suggests that schools replace Catcher in the Rye in the curriculum with David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green. Two thumbs up from this reader, who never could finish Catcher.
Young readers need a new coming-of-age classic, a book that has yet to be discovered and co-opted by the culture, a book that shares Salinger’s sense for adolescent heartbreak and anger while refreshing its midcentury references and voice, a jewel of a book that could feel like new. Happily, such a book has already been written.
{Read our 2006 interview with Mitchell here.}
Think you read a lot? Me too, until I heard this story.
I am behind in my New Yorker reading, but Shouts & Murmurs really hit it out of the ballpark a couple of weeks back with Le Blog de Jean-Paul Sartre.
Happy Friday! What links have you discovered this week?
