Susannah Hunnewell interviews Michel Houellebecq, France’s controversial literary icon, for The Paris Review’s “The Art of Fiction” series: “There is a need for intensity. From time to time, you have to forsake harmony. You even have to forsake truth. You have to, when you need to, energetically embrace excessive things.”
Michel Houellebecq on the Art of Fiction
It Keeps Giving
“Still, it’s difficult to know whether [Shel] Silverstein, who died of a heart attack in 1999, after keeping out of the public eye for more than two decades, meant for us to read the book so conclusively. His biography and body of work suggest a subtler, and, in the end, perhaps an even more troubling, way of looking at it.” Ruth Margalit on The Giving Tree.
Meet Ironheart
“I just think it’ll have such a positive effect on the geek community, the black girl community, the black geek girl community… just opening the doors of your mind to what you can achieve.” The newest character to wear Iron Man’s suit? A 15-year-old girl named Riri Williams, reports NPR. As for your own inner geek, might they be interested in an unauthorized corporate history of Marvel Comics?
Flummoxing Florals
With the cold front in America right now, you would never know it’s meant to be spring. To get yourself in the season, take The Guardian’s floral poetry quiz. Sample question: “What reminds Ezra Pound of ‘petals on a wet, black bough’?”
Jean Craighead George Passes Away
Celebrated author Jean Craighead George passed away this week at the age of 92. George published more than 100 books throughout her career, often focusing on the environment and the natural world, most famously in My Side of the Mountain and in her Newbery Medal-winner, Julie of the Wolves.
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Rachman’s Single
Tom Rachman, author of Millions Hall of Famer The Imperfectionists, has a new short story out as a Kindle Single: “The Bathtub Spy.”
Downthread
It’s notable when a respected magazine publishes a short story written in the form of a comment thread. It’s even more notable when the author of that story is Bobbie Ann Mason. At The Nervous Breakdown, new fiction from the author of Shiloh and Other Stories.
“Everybody thinks they’re worth more than they’re being paid”
“I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to jauntily denigrate 27.8 million—that’s the number of American workers who make less than $10.10 an hour,” yet, in The Morning News, a close reading of a few hundred letters to the editor about the minimum wage shows other Americans doing just that.