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
To Train Up a Child
The self-proclaimed Christian parenting book, To Train Up a Child, has come under fire in the wake of the three child deaths. Critics started an online petition asking Amazon chief Jeff Bezos to stop selling the book; over 9,000 people have signed it.
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The Paris Review’s Roundtable
Paris Review editor Lorin Stein sat down alongside James Salter, Mona Simpson, and John Jeremiah Sullivan to discuss the magazine’s sixtieth anniversary with Charlie Rose. At one point Stein admits that, “If you wrote about sex the way Jim [Salter] writes about sex ... in nonfiction, you would be a sociopath.” (Bonus: Stein writes about John O’Hara for The New Yorker.)
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Acquiring the Vanities
The New York Public Library just acquired Tom Wolfe's archives for $2.15 million. They include 190 boxes of drafts, outlines, and research for his articles and books as well as 10,000 letters from the likes of Hunter S. Thompson and Gay Talese. But the library missed the opportunity to get one of his famous white suits because as Wolfe said, "Those are the things I really can’t part with." Here's one of our favorite Wolfe essays, "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s."
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Huxley’s Closes His Doors of Perception
Doors of Perception author Aldous Huxley requested a dose of LSD as he succumbed to laryngeal cancer in 1963. Three weeks later, Huxley’s widow, Laura Archera, wrote a letter describing the experience (“the most beautiful death”) to her brother-in-law. Today the prescription of psychedelic drugs to terminally ill patients is less uncommon than you might expect.
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Because Language
Because internet we have a new preposition. Yes, that's right the word "because" is no longer a mere subordinating conjunction but also a preposition. We challenge someone to write an entire short story with this preposition or at least a poem because literature.
Rock the Vote
Well, that's one way to get the youth involved in politics. According to this piece over at The Daily Beast, "Before Tinder, before shopping malls, drive-ins, or speak-easies, young people searched for a place to meet and flirt. In 19th century America, wild political rallies offered the perfect opportunity."
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