“We learn how to be mad, the same way we learn how to be male or female, or how we learn how to participate in society.” On fads and mental illness.
The Therapy Fads
What’s In the Trunk?
Recommended Viewing: Alejandro Cartagena’s photo series, “The Car Poolers.”
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Geoff Dyer Gets New York Times Column
Millions favorite Geoff Dyer, author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, is going to start writing a column for The New York Times‘ Book Review. “Reading Life” will detail “the ups and down of his long relationship with the written word. What do we do to books and what do books do to us? How do they delight and derange?” His first column can be found here.
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The Book of the Dead
“Reading the Grateful Dead is not a history of the band; it is a study of the landscape they and their fans created, as surveyed from a caravan that crisscrossed the country, Europe, and even Egypt for roughly 2,300 shows over 30 years.” Dead Head Buzz Poole takes a look at “Grateful Dead studies.” (The song that turned him, it turns out, was ‘Scarlet Begonias.’)
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The Odd Poe Out
As Kevin Jackson notes in Prospect Magazine, Edgar Allan Poe differs from many of his contemporary American authors in that he’s often treated with “a hint of condescension and a splash of pity somewhere in the mix” by modern English students. And yet his influence perseveres. He is, after all, the only author with an NFL namesake. And he’s apparently huge in France. So what gives?
Death by Bookcase
At the Telegraph, Sir Tom Stoppard briefly explains his desire to be killed by a falling bookcase.
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VIDA Shall Be Pleased
By happy accident, the third issue of Brooklyn-based lit mag Armchair/Shotgun (which uses an anonymous submissions system) is composed entirely of female writers. Issues are available for online purchase. EDIT: Following our update, the publication put out a notice on how the “all-female-writers issue” issue came to be.
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On Writing While Parenting
Having kids changes everything, of course, but for the writer, used to working in quiet solitude, it can feel like the end. Jessica Francis Kane writes about how she learned to write again, in a new way, after having children and offers some tips for new parents who write.