Friday's Literary Grab Bag

Here's Looking At You, Hugo

The best and worst thing about writing is the hope. Writers hope for success passionately, blindly, like little kids on Christmas. Hope is never dormant, and it’s always right around the corner. But sprinting to that corner is dangerous. Often, failure trips us up. But writers are dreamers, and we’re determined. We have a stomach for suffering. We hope beyond hope. Just like those lucky scribes that recently were awarded fellowships by the NEA. Congrats! Now let’s move on and avoid any bitterness. Writers can find hopeful/less counsel from other writers. A new biography of Brazilian author Clarice Lispector is reviewed by the Economist. Interviews are equally informative, and sprinkled with words of optimism. Jump over to Book Forum for a talk with A.S. Byatt. Some people set their sights low, like Failure Magazine. It’s appropriate, then, that they review books about America’s fall from grace. Iceland has a national literacy rate of 99.9%. If that’s not hopeful we don’t know what is. Finally, a Swiss writer you’ve never read has died. While this is not good news, Hugo Loetscher lived a long, full life, which is the most any of us can hope for. – Kevin Murphy

– The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will award 16 literature fellowships totaling $275,000 to support projects by literary translators to translate works written in other languages into English. Available to published literary translators for specific projects, the fellowships often result in the translated writer’s work being available in English for the first time. The grants are for $12,500 or $25,000 depending on the scope and merit of each project. — NEA in the KC Info Zone

Walking Down That Prehuman Road

– “Prehuman divine life is a life of singeing nowness.” Clarice Lispector, who wrote these words, was as enigmatic as they are. Benjamin Moser sets out to crack the enigma. One finishes his new biography largely persuaded by his solution while wishing that he had gone at the task a little less strenuously. — Clarice Lispector in the Economist

– The prolific A. S. Byatt has been publishing novels since the mid-’60s (her first, The Shadow of the Sun, came out in 1964), but it wasn’t until 1990, when she won the Booker Prize for Possession—the story of a pair of contemporary scholars whose research on two Victorian poets reveals an extramarital affair between them—that she became an international (literary) household name. — A.S. Byatt in Book Forum

– One of Switzerland’s best known German-language writers, Hugo Loetscher, has died in Zurich, his publisher said on Tuesday. Loetscher, who would have turned 80 in December, started his career as a literary critic and editor. In the 1960s he started traveling widely, especially in Latin America and South East Asia, and reported on the countries he visited. — Hugo Loetscher in Swiss Info

Everyone Stays Inside Reading In Iceland

– With its 99.9% literacy rate (seriously), and a roster of great authors (Halldór Laxness, Hallgrímur Helgason) that belies the fact that it has a smaller population than Bakersfield, the nation of Iceland could fairly be called a book lover’s paradise. (There’s even a “Library of Water” there, which, according to my Icelandic American partner, delivers exactly what it promises.) — Iceland in Jacket Copy

– Kurt Andersen—author, culture critic, magazine journalist, and public radio host—is breezily optimistic about the future of America. In his view, expressed so thoughtfully in “Reset,” the current economic crisis represents a golden opportunity for the United States to get back “on the right track.” He reasons that the country has gone off the rails and self-corrected before, and we’ll just have to do it again. — America in Failure Magazine

Video: Kurt Andersen on Charlie Rose