It has been a very busy summer this year and I haven’t been able to keep up with the literature this year. I’m just catching up with some of the interesting articles and blog posts out there. Here are a few that caught my eye recently. Most are in English. Enjoy.

A Beginner’s Guide to Alice Munro – from the Millions. Since this blog is often about short stories, this piece caught my eye. It is a good overview. Her influence is large in the English speaking world, but she is also often sited as an influence in the Spanish speaking world.

The New Yorker has published a short story from 1936. The Guardian some context for the story: not one of his best.

A graphic comic of Thomas Bernard. (via Scott)

Andrés Neuman’s summer reading list.

Stephanie Nikolopoulos at the Millions writes about the different reactions men and women have about Jack Kerouac.

Men’s disinterest in Austen and other female authors has, of course, been its own cause for consideration. Last year, in an article entitled “Men Need Only Read Books by Other Men, Esquire Post Suggests,” The Atlantic Wire rightly took issue with the fact that only one female author was listed in Esquire’s “75 Books Men Should Read.” However, guess which male author The Atlantic Wire specifically mentions, as if he is the driving force behind men’s exclusion of female writers: “hard-living, macho writers like…Jack Kerouac.” Interesting. I would have called him a life-affirming, sensitive author. It was Kerouac, after all, who wrote, “Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk—real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”

And a note about Alfredo Bryce Echenique’s latest novel.