Ever wonder where the phrase “worth his salt” came from? How about “spill the beans”? At The Smithsonian Magazine, Lisa Bramen traces the origins of food-related idioms. (via.)
Going Bananas Over a Piece of Cake
Stumped and Delighted
This fantastic essay from The Rumpus argues for the abandonment of realism in American fiction. Charles Finch wrote an essay for The Millions on the truce between realism and fabulism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude that pairs quite nicely.
Carrots: Lies and Truth
When I was young, my mother always told me I should eat my carrots so my vision would improve. For twenty four years, I’ve obeyed. But now it seems I’ve been living a lie all this time. (Bonus carrot link: the most common type used to be purple, but orange was normalized to please the Dutch monarchy.)
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The Modern Memoir
Recommended Reading: On the memoir, “the offspring of the slave narrative,” as a literary form from the Black tradition. Recent examples range from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Margo Jefferson to Clifford Thompson and Rosemarie Freeney.
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Whitman on Poe
“Poe’s verses illustrate an intense faculty for technical and abstract beauty, with the rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal themes, a demoniac undertone behind every page—and, by final judgment, probably belong among the electric lights of imaginative literature, brilliant and dazzling, but with no heat.” – Walt Whitman on Edgar Allan Poe’s significance, circa 1880.
Cary Fukunaga to Direct WWII Flick
An unpublished novel by ESPN the Magazine editor Paul Kix will be adapted into a movie by True Detective director Cary Fukunaga. The project is known as Noble Assassin, and it will concern a French aristocrat who trains with British Special Operations in hopes of one day returning to his native country to lead the World War II resistance.
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I Will Remember
Recommended Reading: this moving piece from Andrew Higgins at The Rumpus on admissions of guilt.
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Arthur Phillips, Still Writing
This thoroughly entertaining conversation between Robert Birnbaum and Arthur Phillips is not to be missed. Topics include faking Shakespeare, beagles, being anti-social in Brooklyn, pilates, and writing for a living.
Tuesday New Release Day: Hashimi; Torné; Leo; Bullough; Warren
Out this week: A House Without Windows by Nadia Hashimi; Divorce Is in the Air by Gonzalo Torné; The Gentleman by Forrest Leo; Addlands by Tom Bullough; and Liberty Street by Dianne Warren. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half Book Preview.
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