Literati roundup: “Svetlana Alexievich of Belarus wins Nobel literature prize
Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for works that the prize judges called “a monument to suffering and courage.”
One my very first acts as a new New Yorker many years ago was to make the journey across three boroughs to Woodlawn cemetery in the Bronx. My purpose: a pilgrimage to Herman Melville’s grave. I came not to worship a hero, exactly, but—as Fordham University English professor Angela O’Donnell writes—“to see a friend.” Professor O’Donnell goes on: “It might seem presumptuous to regard a celebrated 19th-century novelist so familiarly, but reading a great writer across the decades is a means of conducting conversation with him and, inevitably, leads to intimacy.” I fully share the sentiment.