“The fiction of normative value(s) invests itself in the legitimation of the public sphere.” Finally, you don’t have to make up your own bullshit, with this nifty academic writing generator!
The normative, the gendered body, etc. etc.
Every Word of The Great Gatsby…On Stage
In this week’s New Yorker, Rebecca Mead writes about the 8-hour staging of the full text of The Great Gatsby – “Gatz” – at the Public Theater. She and actor Scott Shepherd discuss it on a podcast.
Tuesday New Release Day: Mitchell, Hadley
It’s a quiet week for new books. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which famously became a blockbuster bestseller after being released as a paperback original, is now available in hardcover for the first time ever in the U.S., thanks to a new Modern Library Edition. Short story master Tessa Hadley has a new collection out, Married Love, (as a paperback original, coincidentally).
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A Critic Turned Novelist
“Sometimes I think I’ve lost my nerve a little bit. I think it’s growing older, and a certain reservoir of anger literally runs out.” The Guardian interviews James Wood, author and book critic at The New Yorker, about his craft, his forthcoming novel Upstate, and the landscape of today’s literary criticism. Pair with: an essay about the greatness (and great influence) of Wood on a fellow novelist.
Fictional Characters Read Fiction
Dan Humphrey, a character on Gossip Girl, names his top 10 books of 2009.
Electric Lit interviews Patricia Lockwood
Electric Literature has a fantastic interview with “viral poet” Patricia Lockwood, author of “Rape Joke,” new book Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, and this prophecy: “We’re going to have something in the future that is so much more revealing than tit pics, and we don’t even know what it is yet.” Pair with: today’s new Millions piece on publishers’ struggle to turn the love of poetry into poetry sales.
Urban Homesteaders
Better late than never, here are eight great new books for Urban Homesteaders.
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