David Keenan's debut novel, This is Memorial Device, about a small town in Lanarkshire and its post-punk scene, showed that it wasn't easy being Iggy Pop in Airdrie. For the Good Times, his second, set in 1970s Belfast, shows that it isn't easy being a Perry Como-loving one of the boys in the Ardoyne.
For 24 years, literary scholar Robert Alter has been working on a new translation of the Hebrew Bible and — "this may shock some of your listeners," he warns — he's been working on it by hand.
"I'm very particular — I write on narrow-lined paper and I have a Cross mechanical pencil," he says.
The result is a three-volume set — a translation with commentary — that runs over 3,000 pages.
Working solo for so long on a project of this magnitude can take its toll, he says: "If you keep going verse by verse, looking at the commentary and wrestling with difficult words and so forth, you can get a little batty."
Read Full Article »