Along with D.T. Max, Laura Miller, and Jason Kottke, I’ll be participating in this week’s discussion of Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace over at New York Magazine.
Appearing Elsewhere: DFW Roundtable
Love-Love
Why not follow in the footsteps of writers such as David Foster Wallace and play some tennis?
David Mitchell on The King’s Speech
The King’s Speech is the first film to portray my speech defect realistically, says novelist David Mitchell.
A Visual Mind
To get a full sense of the legacy of William Blake, you need to see his paintings alongside his famous poems. The Wordsworth contemporary did much of his best work — including the covers of his own collections — with a brush. At the New York Review of Books blog, Jenny Uglow pays a visit to a new exhibition at Oxford.
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“Jeff Koons poses next to a pig, grinning”
The recent opening of the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art has occasioned a number of rave reviews. They’re so good, in fact, that they’ve inspired Los Angeles Times writer Carolina A. Miranda to comb the write-ups for “evocative turn[s] of phrase, political metaphor[s], and references to lady parts” in order to assemble a standalone poem. Or, rather, it was standalone until artist William Powhida made a drawing out of it. (Full size drawing here.)
Keeping the Pace
“A story works when there’s momentum, life behind the words,” Mary Miller told Matthew Salesses at The Rumpus. She needs that momentum for her new novel, The Last Days of California, about a family driving to California for the rapture. Also, Amy Butcher wrote about her favorite Millerisms at Hobart.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Harkaway, Nescio, Lehrer, Kerouac, Galassi
New this week are Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker (reviewed here), Nescio’s Amsterdam Stories (reviewed here), Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine: How Creativity Works, Jack Kerouac’s “lost novel” The Sea is My Brother, and a new collection of poetry from Jonathan Galassi, Left-Handed.
Sor Juana, the 10th Muse
Matthew Wills remembers Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th-century nun who went on to become the founding mother of Mexican literature.
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Literary Disco
Literary Disco, a podcast hosted by Julia Pistell, Tod Goldberg, and Rider Strong (yeah! Sean from Boy Meets World!) is just great. In the most recent installment the hosts revisit their bookshelves and describe their new findings from rereading some faves, including Strong’s overwhelming reaction to T.C. Boyle‘s author photo.