Literary Memes
Memes about books, writers and the canon — with the real context underneath. The image is the hook; the argument is the history.
Antonioni kept Cortázar's photographer and his enlargement and let the narrator go. Most people meet only the film.
Posts
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Who came out of the Ern Malley hoax looking worse?
Two poets faked a dead modernist in an afternoon to embarrass a magazine. Then the state took the fake poems seriously too.
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How much of Cortázar's story survives in Antonioni's Blow-Up?
Antonioni kept Cortázar's photographer and his enlargement and let the narrator go. Most people meet only the film.
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Did Emily Dickinson's first serious reader ever understand what she sent him?
Dickinson asked a critic whether her verse was alive. He told her not to publish, then wrote to her for twenty years.
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What does it do to Don Quixote that his own readers show up in Part Two?
In Part Two, Don Quixote's characters have read Part One, and the book answers a rival sequel. The hero has to compete with a counterfeit of himself.
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Did Dickens send Martin Chuzzlewit to America to save the sales?
Chuzzlewit's sales were bad, so Dickens moved his hero to America mid-serial. The fix angered a whole other audience.