Melville House Books

Tragedy

• Authorities may reopen murder investigation of poet, filmmaker Pasolini . . .

  The investigation into the murder of poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini may be reopened after the man convicted of the 1975 murder has recanted his story. According to an… Read more »

• Flook speaks . . .

  As a follow-up to yesterday’s report about the arrest of a suspect in the murder of writer Christa Worthington, a report that implied the controversial bestselling book on the case,… Read more »

• The garbageman and the bestseller . . .

  The brutal rape and murder of writer Christa Worthington has finally been solved, and according to an Associated Press wire story by Matt Pitta, the solution seems at odds with… Read more »

• Thompson's love letters console his widow . . .

  In her first extended interview, Anita Thompson, the widow of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, says the writer “began saying that suicide wasn’t a dishonorable thing a few months before he… Read more »

• The fight over Shulz's identity . . .

  There’s no question that the great Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz was a “modernist master,” but the manner of his death has made him a much more complex historic… Read more »

• Writing about suffering . . .

  “Many thousands of words have now been spent on the theological ramifications of the Asian tsunami,” observes James Wood in a commentary for The Guardian. “Literature can no more ‘explain’… Read more »

• The poet exits . . .

  January 7 was the 33rd anniversary of the suicide of John Berryman. As Robert Lacy writes in an essay for Poetry Daily, “Art Hitman, a carpenter employed by the university,… Read more »

• They're still lining up to get into Russia's only writing program

  While college writing programs have proliferated in the West, there’s only one such in Russia: Moscow’s Literary Institute. As Anna Malpas reports in a Moscow Times story, “The institute was… Read more »

• Humor + poetry = hope . . .

  In the wake of John Kerry’s loss in the presidential race, Alicia Ostriker notes that “Without humor, we are done for.” In a commentary for Newsday, she notes the things… Read more »