Melville House Books

Literary estates

• John Updike’s home will become a museum

  The Reading Eagle have announced that the John Updike Society has finalized plans to buy the author’s childhood home in Shillington, Pennsylvania, for $200,000. Updike, who died in 2009, lived… Read more »

• Scholars and publishers celebrate the end of the James Joyce estate

  The day that many scholars, publishers, critics, and other lovers of literature have hoped would come at last, has come at last. Yes, as of the 1st of January, the… 2 / Read more »

• Casanova: The serial seducing feminist

  For the first time ever, the original manuscript of Jacques Casanova’s legendary memoirs has been put on display. The show, titled Casanova—The Passion for Freedom, is being held at the… Read more »

• Beckett’s Postwar Reading List

  The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 2 was released last month; the book reveals what the famous author was reading from 1941 to 1956, along with notes about the novels… Read more »

• Living with Norman

  You can, if you’ve got the scratch, and the desire, buy deceased author Norman Mailer’s Brooklyn apartment. It’s on the market now for a cool $2.5 million. Mailer, who had… Read more »

• Children of Malcolm X locked in bitter dispute over his writings

  A trove of unpublished writings by Malcolm X — including journals he kept in the year leading up to his assassination — is being kept from publication by a bitter,… 9 / Read more »

• J.D. Salinger on when a novel is just a novel

  The University Archives website — an auction house that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with a university — is offering another look into the deep reclusiveness of J.D.… Read more »

• KVML is shaping up

  Via Matt Sledge’s post and slide show over at the Huffington Post, we learned that the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is well on its way to being ready to open… Read more »

• Judge orders trove of Kafka documents — said to include never-before-seen short story — to be made public

  Following up on an earlier report: “A judge at Tel Aviv District Family Court on Tuesday rejected a request for a gag order on the contents of a box containing… 2 / Read more »

• Secret trove of Kafka papers forcibly opened

  “After months of legal wrangling, one of the 10 safe deposit boxes in which documents belonging to the writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924 ) and his close friend Max Brod (1884-1968… Read more »