Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Neil Strauss warns readers about the “insidious evils of ‘like’ culture.” Was he in the audience for Jonathan Franzen‘s May 21 commencement speech at Kenyon College?
‘Dislike’ Button Forthcoming
An Imagined Country
“The immigrant who arrives too late in life to adapt to his new country, but too early to survive on nostalgia for the old country, has to create a third, imagined country to live in.” Peter Pomerantsev writes for the London Review of Books about Brighton Beach, Russian immigrants and a “self-made America.” Pair with Matthew Wolfson‘s review of Yelena Akhtiorskaya‘s novel of Brighton Beach and Odessa, Panic in a Suitcase.
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On the Adjunct
McSweeney’s has a few classic college movies updated for the adjunct era. Spoiler Alert: Good Will Hunting has a very different ending.
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NPR Reviews the New Franzen
Alan Cheuse‘s review of Jonathan Franzen‘s much-anticipated new novel, Freedom, appeared on All Things Considered yesterday…and begs the question of what kind of compassion we look for in novels.
Ask Jeeves
Didn’t like how the Utterly Uncle Fred stories ended? Now is your chance to rewrite them and other P.G. Wodehouse favorites. At The Toast, Mallory Ortberg presents “Choose Your Own P.G. Wodehouse Adventure.”
Tuesday New Release Day
This week we have new on shelves: Julie Orringer’s hotly anticipated debut novel The Invisible Bridge; Meghan Daum’s memoir of real estate addiction Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, Private Life by Jane Smiley, and The Singer’s Gun by our own Emily St. John Mandel.
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My Life
Peg Plunkett was an 18th-century Dublin courtesan who decided one day to make some money by publishing a series of memoirs. Now, over two hundred years after Plunkett sketched out her life story, Professor Julie Peakman has rewritten all three volumes for a modern audience. In a piece for The New Statesman, Sarah Dunant reviews her edition of Plunkett’s oeuvre.