Paula Fox‘s ostensible review of L.J. Davis‘ A Meaningful Life in the current New York Review of Books is really (pace N1BR) a transporting memoir of Brooklyn in the ’70s.
Brooklyn Was Mine
What Is Camp?
You may have watched the Met Gala this week with a mix of horror, fascination, and one nudging complaint: That's not camp!
●
●
●
Getcha Popcorn Ready
Think of this as the film world’s equivalent of our Great Book Preview: Metacritic pores over the “50 Most-Anticipated Films” of the coming year.
●
●
Betting on the Blind Side
We’ve been tracking excerpts from Michael Lewis‘ just-released The Big Short for a while now; the latest, fascinating installment is at Vanity Fair.
●
●
The Oddity
You may have heard that the pioneering jazz musician Ornette Coleman died last week at the age of eighty-five. As a composer, he was known for his odd melodies, which reliably tested the boundaries of what jazz could accomplish. At The Paris Review Daily, two musicians and writers look back on his legacy.
●
●
Near to the wild heart
A charming doodle of the beautiful connecting covers for mid Clarice Lispector’s four soon-to-be-released novels. You can also buy a poster of the original from New Directions. And given how much Carolyn Kellogg enjoyed them, mentally shelving the Brazilian author beside Kafka and Joyce, and of course based on the near infinite readability of The Hour of the Star, I’m wondering if this will be the year of Lispector.
●
●
Twitter Bird Flu
Hypochondriacs rejoice! A team of scientists from the University of Rochester is working on a “machine-based algorithm” in the same vein as Google Flu Trends—but this time based on Twitter and smart phone data—to predict, with about 90% accuracy, when you’ll next get sick.
●
●