In an unexpected crossover of the sporting and the literary, ESPN Magazine is running a sports-themed short fiction contest. They aren’t publicizing it online, but this PDF from the print mag has all the details.
Sports Fiction
Another “Mildred Pierce”
Are you a Mildred Pierce fan? James M. Cain’s recently discovered manuscript will be released next year by Hard Case Crime.
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“Stupidity stalks us all”
Following the example of Flaubert, whose Dictionary of Received Ideas compiled the clichés of its day, Teju Cole set out on Monday to record his own clichés on Twitter. At Page-Turner, he sums up his experiment in a blog post. (You may recall that this is not the first time Cole has won acclaim for his Twitter account.)
Poetry of Surveillence
“Nuclear Chelsea Air Marshal infrastructure Ionosphere Burst.” You can thank the NSA for this haiku. The NSA Haiku Generator is a website that takes commonly flagged terms and turns them into poetry. Have fun messing up the NSA’s algorithms for a day.
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Strange Cults, Powerful Elders, and Other Features of Academia
Does this harrowing plot summary describe a critically acclaimed film of the 2010s, or does it describe your PhD program?
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Wimmer on Bolaño
Year in Reading alum Scott Esposito asks fellow Year in Reading alum Natasha Wimmer nine questions about Roberto Bolaño’s The Third Reich.
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