In the new Quarterly Conversation, among other pieces, Jordan Soyka endeavors to answer the question, “How do we decide who owns the right to write about Hurricane Katrina?”
New Quarterly Conversation
Patriotic Poetry
Writing for Vouched Books (of which I’ve raved previously), Tyler Gobble dedicates his “Best Thing I’ve Read This Week” column to Laurie Saurborn Young’s Patriot chapbook. The work collects thirteen poems – each entitled “Patriot” – which “craft as they go a sense of living, having lived, the naming as a startling mechanism to remind just how much there is here, right here, hello.”
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The Iron Man
Sasha Dugdale believes that Ted Hughes’s greatest contribution to the world of poetry remains Modern Poetry in Translation, the magazine which got its start thanks to an off-hand suggestion by Hughes at a cocktail party in the mid-sixties. Here’s our review of Jonathan Bate’s recent take on the poet, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorized Life.
Don’t Even Ask about the Goggles
Looking to show your fellow beachgoers just how rich and erudite you are? Then mosey on over to the Paris Review Store, where you can buy four pairs of nifty-looking swim trunks that each cost $320.
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Telling the Truth
“There is no such thing as a true story. I know this because my daughter insists I told her to put her dirty dishes in the sink when I know I told her to put them in the dishwasher.” Over at The Rumpus, Ellen Urbani writes about telling the truth.
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Must’ve Been a “Ruff” Proofread
Aspiring authors, take note. If you want to sell your latest book, grow another set of legs, some fur, and bark adorably. That’s what earned Uggie, the dog from The Artist, his forthcoming memoir, Uggie: My Story. Suddenly, our dog-book pun-a-thon from a while back seems prescient.
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Walking the Cigar
We all have our obsessions. A friend of mine moved to New York City about a year ago and has made it his mission to catch a glimpse of Gay Talese taking his cigar for a walk. He’s been unsuccessful thus far.
We Need to Lie Down
“But migraines! Everyone relishes a migraine. They have a literal aura! Migraines foster the sort of pure narcissism that only intense, essentially benign pain can. We sufferers (that’s how it’s described, “migraine sufferer”) feel it is meet and right that the migraine should be dramatized in films like Pi or White Heat; this strengthens the perception that migraines are the hallmark of geniuses, or at least psychopaths. Joan Didion writes about them; of course she does.” Sadie Stein on the allure of the headache to end all headaches.
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