A couple of Pale King odds & ends: N+1 reruns Benjamin Kunkel‘s astute DFW memoriam, and Jonathan Raban tackles the religious side of the Wallace weltanschauung for the NYRB. (Whither Wyatt Mason?)
More Pale King
“Which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism”
Much fuss was made about Barack Obama’s ex-girlfriends this week, as an excerpt from David Maraniss’ forthcoming Barack Obama: The Story was published in Vanity Fair. Of course, we sophisticated book readers care less about the man’s old flames than we do his literary pursuits, right? That’s why Mr. President’s analysis of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” is so interesting.
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Kind of Bloop
Kind of Bloop: An 8-Bit Tribute to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue
Just Right
The National Rifle Association is featuring a series of reimagined fairy tales on their website. The only difference? Way more guns. In the debut story, Hansel and Gretel don’t bemoan their lack of food since they had been taught from birth to hunt with guns for sustenance. No, it’s not yet April Fools’ Day.
Lorin Stein on Grace Paley, Elliot Gould, and philo-semi-Semitism
Jewcy offers a wide-ranging and formidably erudite interview with Paris Review editor Lorin Stein.
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Zbigniew Herbert on Leonardo da Vinci
With the publication of Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert’s The Collected Prose: 1948-1998 this week, the New York Review of Books Blog posts his essay on Leonardo da Vinci.
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There’s Even a Cash Prize
“Without your micro-fiction, we’re like a flightless bird, sauceless noodles, or decarbonated LaCroix. We loved the response to our last contest so much that, naturally, we’re having another one.” Submit your 200-word stories of separation to Paper Darts for its second annual micro-fiction award, judged this time around by Lesley Nneka Arimah (whose What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky graced our most-anticipated list for the first half of this year).
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