Is that an iPod Nano? And a fixed gear bike? Uh-oh: you might have hipsters (via).
Cockroaches in Skinny Jeans
7 reasons not to write a novel
Javier Marías cogently summarizes all the reasons to stop writing novels immediately, and adds only one reason to write them anyway: “Fiction is the most bearable of worlds.” We reviewed The Infatuations, one of his own twelve works (to date), last year.
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Post-Lit
Though Kim Gordon is mostly known for her time in Sonic Youth, she’s also an artist and writer, one who’s racked up art projects and publications over the course of the past forty years. At Full-Stop, Hestia Peppe reviews Is It My Body?, a new collection of Gordon’s essays and other written work. It might also be a good time to read our own Anne K. Yoder on punk and revolutionary nonfiction.
Tuesday New Release Day: Dos Passos; Wagner
Out this week: a new e-book edition of The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos and The Empty Chair by Bruce Wagner.
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So, You Want to Manage a Lit Mag
In a timely article for recent graduates, The Missouri Review’s managing editor Michael Nye tells the story of how he came to steward one of the most interesting literary magazines in the country. Spoiler alert: it’s important that you like reading.
The War on Baby Girls
We’re headed toward a future with a “biologically unnatural excess of males,” writes Nicholas Eberstadt. Indeed, “It’s a girl” can be recognized among “the three deadliest words in the world.”
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Pynchon Possessed by the Spirit of a Teenaged Girl
“Though female authors write experimental novels about women—like Renata Adler’s Speedboat or Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?—the avant-garde has long been associated with male authors and stories. That association made Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine seem doubly unusual.” On Kleeman’s debut novel and blatantly feminine themes in the avant-garde.