【Italy】

Art and ItalyLiterature Are Teeming with Monsters, and Other News

By Dan Piepenbring

On the Shelf

Bosch Hell

Art credit Hieronymus Bosch.

  • Behold, art and literature’s greatest monsters! Plenty of welcome departures from the norm here—Frankenstein and Dracula didn’t make the list. Neither did Chuck Palahniuk.
  • In a synergistic turn worthy of the greatest CEOs, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinchhas caused a spike in attendance at the Frick, where its namesake painting resides. (There’s a tote bag now, too.)
  • An intrepid sociologist gets at the roots of uptalk—the irritating tendency to inflect every sentence as if it were a question—by watching Jeopardy!
  • Disparaging nondisparagement agreements: Byliner canned editor Will Blythe, and he’s not going quietly. Or rather, he is going quietly, but he would prefer to reserve the right not to.

 

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