The Times collects the final tweets of a number of celebrities who died this year. They are generally banal but the context turns them poignant.
#LastTweet
Whodunnit
And then there was you: the Oxford English Dictionary is soliciting public help in tracking down “a mysterious, possibly pornographic, 19th-century book from which a number of its quotations are derived.”
I work nine to five and ain’t a damn thing changed
Jeff Chang, whose Can’t Stop Wont Stop I just can’t recommend enough for anyone interested in the history of hip hop, has a great piece in the LARB on rap music and the 1992 LA Riots. The LA Times also ran a compelling essay on Toddy Tee, N.W.A. and other prescient west coast MCs, the forefathers of what became commercial gangsta rap.
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#history
“if you’re looking to sound clever, you could call it an ‘octothorpe’, the tongue-in-cheek term coined at Bell to describe it.” The history of hashtags, and other words that the Internet has given us.
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The Parent Trap
“This is how he justified what he did even as he knew what kind of parent he’d become, the kind that used to make him gag as recently as two months ago. The ones who blithely assumed their online friends were gluttons for punishment. Here’s my baby lying on his back! And here’s my baby also lying on his back! And how about this one: blurry baby on his back! Good God, the vanity of it all, the epic self-centeredness. He knew all this, and still he uploaded eleven pictures of Brian.” An excerpt of Victor LaValle’s new novel The Changeling. (You could also read our interview with the author from last year.)
People who should feel rooted, but rarely do.
In an interview with the Guardian about Canada, Richard Ford talks about America: “I never had much conceptual idea of Canada being better. But whenever I go there, I feel this fierce sense of American exigence just relent. America beats on you so hard the whole time.” Also see: Michael Bourne’s review of the novel.
This Slim and Slippery Thread of Hope
“The day after we elected Donald Trump, I told my daughter the truth: This was the wrong choice. I am devastated. I am furious. And I am sorry, because you deserve better.” Nicole Chung with some beautiful words over at Buzzfeed (q.v. also Mira Jacob (“Here’s What I’m Telling My Brown Son About Trump’s America”) and Manuel Gonzalez (“I Will Teach My Children To Survive The New America”).
Appearing Elsewhere
Fence has a new web site. And a new fall issue! My story “The Art of Forgetting” appears online, alongside new work by Ariana Reines, Mary Jo Bang, and Thomas Israel Hopkins.
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