In the most recent New York Magazine, Conner Gorry takes a look some of the economic transitions affecting Havana, Cuba. Meanwhile, for Guernica, Julia Cooke delves into the city’s epicurean black market.
Investigated Havana
An Infinity in Reading
“Calling yourself depressed when you’re a writer seems so redundant.” On a year in reading Infinite Jest with Anna Fitzpatrick at Hazlitt. Be sure to check out the new fan-designed cover for the twentieth anniversary edition of the book.
Africa’s 54th State
The Republic of South Sudan has declared independence. Just three years ago, Dave Eggers published Out of Exile: Narratives from the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan (Voice of Witness). The Guardian has an excerpt. A year later, Jamal Mahjoub foresaw the secessionist fervor south of Darfur.
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What’s Important
The Los Angeles Review of Books looks at a new history of K Records, the influential Olympia, WA-label that gave us Beat Happening, Modest Mouse, and Kurt Cobain’s arm tattoo.
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From Paris to New York (Broad) City
“Of course the evening ends with Abbi and Ilana in the bath, together, passing their ‘weed’ from one mouth to another. But I am chilled, less comforted somehow. How are these people anything less than confused, every hour of every day? How on earth, how in all of Eros, do women know which vote to cast, which life to elect as their own?” The Diary of Anaïs Nin While Watching Broad City courtesy of Laura Eppinger at The Rumpus.
But just maybe you’ll beat the odds
If you find yourself in a sporting mood, you can place a bet on who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I personally like Alice Munro’s 20/1 odds for taking the award, though Haruki Murakami’s 10/1 make him the safer bet.
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Buy Me A Drink
In what reads like someone’s answer to the “who would you invite to a literary dinner party” question, novelists Jeanette Winterson and Marlon James sat down for a fantastic conversation at a Miami hotel bar. James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings won the Man Booker prize earlier this year.
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What’s the Value of NaNoWriMo?
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