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.
Arthur Phillips, Still Writing
This Could Be Big
After winning a $100,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, what do you do for an encore? How about staging “fifty days of lectures, discussions, and debates” about what the future ought to look like? How about enlisting the likes of Laurie Anderson, Samuel Delany, Rachel Kushner, and Norman Rush as ringmasters? How about having the entire thing take place in structures designed by artists José León Cerrillo and Adrián Villar Rojas? Triple Canopy‘s “Speculations” occupies MoMA’s P.S. 1 this summer
●
●
Poet Zero
When you’re trying to keep up with the best new writers out there, it’s easy to forget the debt we owe to the classics. So let’s go back to the beginning: Why Homer Matters, a new book by Adam Nicholson on the father of all poets, explores the question of who Homer was, and whether or not he was even one person. You could also read Frank Kovarik on the parallels between The Odyssey and Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
Here Comes the Rooster
The Tournament of Books has returned, and this year’s judges include our own Kirstin Butler!
●
●
Reading Rainbow Forever & Always
For every reader who grew up enamored with LeVar Burton‘s now-cancelled PBS show, Reading Rainbow, there’s fresh hope. A Kickstarter campaign to create a spin-off, web-based version of Reading Rainbow that aims to spread literacy to children in under-served schools was launched yesterday and has already received a significant portion of its funding goal. While there are some concerns about the project, the nostalgia factor is incredibly strong, and who doesn’t want to spread the love of reading to children?
●
●
This is a Curiosity-novel
In “kids these days” news, any book now counts as a “novel.” There are fiction novels and nonfiction novels, recipe novels and poetry novels and picture novels and, less facetiously, a new novel told in letters of recommendation, Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members. And now that you’ve finished my three-sentence nonfiction digital novel, here’s the world’s longest novel, which clocks in at 3 million pages that I confess I have not read.
●
●
The Enemy has arrived
Last January, Charlie White launched The Enemy, a new online journal published thrice annually that “invites writers, artists, academics, and activists to present essays and projects outside the mainstreams of their practices and disciplines.”
●
●