for actors who’ve considered suicide/when the matrix isn’t enuf: Keanu Reeves, who some years ago raised hackles when he played Shakespeare’s melancholy Dane, has now written a book-length poem called Ode to Happiness that pokes fun at excessive melancholy. “I draw a hot sorrow bath/In my despair room,” it begins.
Keanu Reeves, Poet
Tuesday New Release Day: Larsen; Hamid; Afrika; Stace; Lethem
Out this week: I Am Radar by Reif Larsen; Discontent and Its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid; Bitter Eden by Tatamkhulu Afrika; Wonderkid by Wesley Stace; and Lucky Alan, a new story collection by Jonathan Lethem. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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American Public Libraries: A Visual History
Public libraries remain our country's greatest democratic institutions, but it took generations of work and social progress to get them to their current place as beacons to their communities.
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Thomas Pynchon: The Video Game
“Inherent Vice . . . is like a novelization of Grand Theft Auto, claims Nerd World. And hey, they’ve got ten points of comparison to back it up, so you know it must be true. (via)
Searching for Geeshie and Elvie
“This is what set Geeshie and Elvie apart even from the rest of an innermost group of phantom geniuses of the ’20s and ’30s. Their myth was they didn’t have anything you could so much as hang a myth on.” John Jeremiah Sullivan investigates more mysterious musicians in The New York Times Magazine. Bonus: You can listen to their music as you read. For more of Sullivan’s music journalism, read his piece on the origins of ska.
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Tote Bags Everywhere
“There is also a particularly awkward and dispiriting form of loneliness that settles in the shoulders when faced with a room filled with social media connections, those digital acquaintances who remain strangers in the flesh.” Life amongst the introverts, and other dispatches from AWP 2013.
6 Book Titles That Will Blow Your Mind!
“7 Awesome Ways Barnyard Animals Are Like Communism.” From McSweeneys, great literature retitled to boost website traffic.
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