Emily Gould awkwardly prepares a salad with Tao Lin in the latest installment of Cooking the Books. (via The Awl)
Emily Gould and Tao Lin Make a Salad
Softcore No More
“Pornography has changed unrecognizably from its so-called golden age—the period, in the sixties and seventies, when adult movies had theatrical releases and seemed in step with the wider moment of sexual liberation, and before V.H.S. drove down production quality, in the eighties. Today’s films are often short and nearly always hard-core; that is, they show penetrative sex. Among the most popular search terms in 2015 were ‘anal,’ ‘amateur,’ ‘teen,’ and—one that would surely have made Freud smile—’mom and son.'” The New Yorker attempts to make some sense of modern pornography.
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“A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment”
Recommended Listening: “A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment,” a new podcast from Sherman Alexie and Jess Walter.
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“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.
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Formative Influence
For every download of “In Memory of a Friend, Teacher and Mentor,” Philip Roth’s eulogy to his high school teacher, the folks at Audible will donate a dollar to the Newark Public Library. Learn more in The Paris Review Daily’s new interview with Roth.
The working mother’s guide to writing a novel
Over at the Los Angeles Times, novelist and critic Mary McNamara offers a working mother’s guide to writing a novel. A glimpse into the life of someone who’s way better at managing her time than I am.
“You Need a Rhyming Word? That’s What We Heard!”
Sesame Street turned in a literary puppet parody in their Sons of Anarchy send-up: Sons of Poetry.
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Teaching in Translation
Over at Words Without Borders, Marguerite Feitlowitz writes on teaching the art of literary translation. As she puts it, “Bringing texts from one place to another, from one tongue, context, history, and human body to another, is itself a political act. We can tell the history of the world through the history of when major texts have been translated—and where, why, and by whom.” Pair with this Millions piece on literary translators at work.
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