As Le Petit Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, “The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.” Perhaps that can be extrapolated for satellites, too. Either way, if this incredible, orbital HD Vimeo footage doesn’t move you, then I don’t know what could.
The True Face of the Earth
Tiger, Tiger
The second movie trailer for Ang Lee’s upcoming adaptation of Life of Pi by Yann Martel has just been released.
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Didion’s Perfect Synthesis
“Many writers write vexed introspection, or detail-oriented reporting, or counterintuitive cultural commentary, or lifestyle journalism. But so far only Didion has done all four in perfect synthesis, a prose that, at its best, can fire on every cylinder and work on multiple fields of the imagination at once.” In support of the Kickstarter project for the documentary on Joan Didion, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, Nathan Heller looks back over Didion’s writing career, her “imaginatively seductive” nonfiction writing and her carefully constructed confessionalism in a piece for Vogue.
A Listicle By Any Other Name
First our own Mark O’Connell pondered the relationship between listicles and our shrinking attention spans for The New Yorker, and now Arika Okrent suggests that a listicle is its own literary form – albeit a “gloriously unspecified” form, at that. Together, these pieces constitute 2 Meditations On Listicles That Will Totally Change Your Life.
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Doubtful
“I have yet to publish a book. The reason for that is, in part, life gets in the way. There’s work and love and art and art usually comes last, (especially for we women writers). But for me, part of what weighs art down and keeps it in last place is overwhelming self-doubt.” In an essay for Electric Literature Lindsay Merbaum writes about writing, a crippling lack of confidence, and the connection between the two. Also included: that defining moment “when I first realized I was not The Shit.”
Long Memory
When Damien Searls first read W.G. Sebald, he thought the German writer was uniquely good at factoring historical circumstance into his thinking. Sebald’s unyielding reminders of the horrors of the past were a nice corrective to the feel-good pablums of the ‘90s. But reading Sebald now, Searls thinks something has changed. What happened? The world went online. (Related: Greg Walklin on Sebald’s A Place in the Country.)
L.A. Times Book Prize Winners
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Twists and Turns
Still haven’t read our own Edan Lepucki’s Colbert-endorsed novel California? Here’s another review to whet your appetite. In the latest Kenyon Review, John Domini writes that “Lepucki, however, not only upends expectation, but also parses out a few good surprises.”
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The Freedom of Limits
“Limits stop you from living a life without limits,” writes Augusten Burroughs. “Of course, this is only an illusion. What limits really do is give you an acceptable excuse to avoid doing something.” (He’s talking about life, not Oulipo.) The piece is excerpted from his recent book, This Is How.
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