The Franzen Printing Error
Pioneering
Recommended Reading: Ruth Graham on the uncensored memoirs of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
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Poetry to the Rescue During Times Of Crisis
Christina Waters examines the rise in poetry's popularity during the pandemic, and how the art form has famously flourished during other times of crisis throughout history.
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Seems About Right
“Post-truth” has been named word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries, reports The Guardian. Considered an adjective, its definition is “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The Dictionaries report its first use in 1992 by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in relation to Iran-Contra and the first Gulf War. And we thought Colbert’s “truthiness” was funny.
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50th Anniversary of “Silent Spring”
The environmental movement is gearing up for 2012, with today being the fiftieth anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One
Have you heard the one about the Holocaust historian who loves Donald Trump? No, really. Eric Metaxas, most well-known for his biography of the theologian/anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer, has claimed that Trump’s rhetoric is all just “schtick,” and that the man himself is “culturally Jewish.”
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Intersections and Turns
Recommended Reading: Noy Holland on writing fiction, a form rooted in deft timing, accidents, and revelations.
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RIP MCA
Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch AKA MCA has died at 47, due to cancer. Pitchfork has more.
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