Gay Talese’s highly detailed accounting of his daily routine — what he reads, how he works — is fascinating.
‘But you must read’
Submissions Open for Dzanc’s Non-Fiction Award
Dzanc Books began the submissions period for its 2013-2014 Non-Fiction Award. The indie press is looking for memoir, political, historical, and biographical manuscripts. Millions contributor Nathan Deuel – whose book Friday Was the Bomb will be published by Dzanc in May — will select a winner from among a list of ten finalists, and the top manuscript will be published in the Fall of 2015. The deadline to enter is June 30, 2014.
●
●
“You are all going to die”
“Freedom is not freedom from connection. Serial killing is freedom from connection. Certain large investment firms have established freedom from connection. But we as people never do, and we’re not supposed to, and we shouldn’t want to. We are individuals, obviously, but we are more than that.” Joss Whedon speaks to Wesleyan’s graduating class.
●
●
Graphic Novelists
HTMLGiant‘s Jimmy Chen follows up his “Author venn diagram” with a “Men matrix” and a “Women matrix.”
●
●
Where You From?
Last semester, at UC Riverside, the novelist Susan Straight began the class “Mixed-Race Literature and the American Experience” with a simple question: “How many of you are often asked, What are you?” In an essay about the class, she relates what they learned, which includes the observation that hair is weirdly important in America. (Related: The Millions published an essay by Straight on Toni Morrison’s Sula.)
●
●
How Slender Man was made
Half-meme, half-myth, ‘Slender Man’ came to us from the same internet that brought LOLcat, doge, and Rule 34. After the surreal stabbing of a 12-year-old girl by two other children claiming they were acting on his behalf, this particular story has taken on a tragic resonance. In The Semiotic Review, Jeffrey Tolbert argues that Slender Man took hold because of the documentary nature of internet ‘evidence’. As one Something Awful blogger put it, “Even if we don’t really believe in [Slender Man], we are cutting him out and sewing him together. We’re stuffing him with nightmares and unspoken fears. And what happens when the pictures are no longer Photoshops?” Very meta–and very scary, all over again.
●
●
Yugolysses
The “Yugoslavian Ulysses,” (not actually titled Yugolysses) has been newly translated into English, and gets a thoughtful but mixed review in TNR.
●
●
“Most of my hike was saying, this is a black body, and it belongs everywhere.”
“There is no divorcing the lack of diversity in the outdoors from a history of violence against the black body, systemic racism, and income inequality,” writes Rahawa Haile in her description of hiking the full length of the Appalachian Trail. Along the way, Haile documented her journey and the books she carried — books written by black authors. In a debrief interview, she explains her motivation: “I want[ed] to bring these books places no one likely has. I want[ed] to document where black brilliance belongs.”