The New York Times profiles our best tool in combating asinine email forwards: snopes.com. Use it liberally against all who forward you nonsense masquerading as “news.”
Snopes to the Rescue!
Traveling with Orhan Pamuk
Want to see the real Istanbul? Take a tour with the ultimate guide, Orhan Pamuk. The author showed The New York Times’s Joshua Hammer around the city. Pair with: Our review of The Museum of Innocence and our essay on his politics.
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The Quest to Write In Other Languages
A writer in both Italian and Arabic, Amara Lakhous writes on linguistic “polygamy” and her desire to become a trilingual writer. Pair with Hannah Gersen’s Millions piece on reading the English translation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words.
Kai and Uncle Ruslan: When Memes Go Dark
“‘It’s important to realize how the funniness in these videos [such as those featuring Kai the axe-wielding hitchhiker and Uncle Ruslan] is really close to something that’s desperately unfunny,’ says Mark O’Connell, who wrote Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever.”
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Advice From The Hoary
“Me? He wants me to give him advice? But why? I still have no idea what I am doing. Then I realized that I did, at least, have eight more years of a writing practice that had run in tandem with a life of odd jobs, graduate school, starting a business, traveling, etc. I thought about an anecdote my friend Daniel once told me about what happened when Ian McEwan was asked to give advice to a young writer just starting out. He simply said, ‘Be successful.’” Catherine Lacey gives advice to a not-much-younger writer.
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The Best and Worst of Times in Today’s New York
This September, OR Books will publish Tales of Two Cities, an anthology of short fiction focused on economic inequality in New York City. Among its contributors are some familiar names: Junot Díaz, Lydia Davis, Dave Eggers, Colum McCann, Téa Obreht, Zadie Smith, and Teju Cole. The volume will also be illustrated by Molly Crabapple, whose Occupy Wall Street portraits earned critical acclaim in 2012.
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Link Bomb
The Columbia Spectator is about to embark on “a list of 50 books that we think capture the essence of each state.”Daniel Menaker, former head of Random House, is set to host a new internet literary talk show called “Titlepage.” It will be modeled after “‘Apostrophes,’ a popular French literary program; ‘The Charlie Rose Show’ on public television; and ‘Dinner for Five,’ in which a group of actors discussed their craft, on the Independent Film Channel.” Guests on the first show include Richard Price and literary it-boy Charles Bock.Quite a resource: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Among the many entries: Death, God and Other Necessary Beings, Nothingness.We Feel Fine: Art from the hive mind.Landscape Urbanism Bullshit GeneratorFree Rice: procrastination fun for those with big vocabularies.The Corporation of London Libraries and Guildhall Art Gallery image database – huge, searchable collection of historical images of London, from which one can order prints.The Port Huron Statement, a part of the UVA Sixties ProjectTen Recurring Economic Fallacies – Put to rest “The Broken Window,” “The Beneficence of War,” and more.
Tuesday New Release Day: Mansbach, Christensen, Ball, Nom de Plumes
Adam Mansbach’s “viral,” tongue-in-cheek kids’ book for adults, Go the F–k to Sleep is now out. We interviewed Mansbach years ago, pre-frenzy, about other matters. This week also offers up a pair of much anticipated novels for the literary set, The Astral by Kate Christensen (don’t miss Edan’s interview with Christensen today) and The Curfew by Jesse Ball, and a rather specialized tome for fans of literary history, Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms.
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