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
Who She’s Writing For
Dispatch From the Future and The Fallback Plan author Leigh Stein explains that she is writing her forthcoming memoir, Land of Enchantment, for “everyone who’s been to more funerals than weddings, everyone who lurks on the Internet late at night looking at pictures of their lost loves, everyone who cries when a certain song comes on the radio because they think it must be a sign.”
Declan Meade and Ireland’s Stinging Fly
Eileen Battersby profiled Declan Meade, the publisher, editor, and co-founder of Ireland’s Stinging Fly literary journal. The magazine, which just published its 43rd issue, has been credited with popularizing some of Ireland’s most significant contemporary writers.
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Uncanny Valley
“I was performing an experiment. I wanted to see [how] one of the greatest minds in history would be affected by an experience he had never had before: imbibing a suitable dose of clinical LSD in a desert setting of great magnificence, and then adding to that various kinds of entertainment.” An oral account of a 1975 trip to Death Valley with Michel Foucault.
Movies R Fun
Check out the online slideshow of Movies R Fun, a collection of drawings done for the 2010 “Lil’ Inappropriate Golden Books” series by Pixar story artist Josh Cooley. He even sells prints on his website.
Can’t-Do Spirit
“America has always been able to countenance beggars, short-con men, and nine-to-fivers who just can’t get ahead, but we’ve never known what to do with the type of person who could have been really big but chose not to make the concessions required.” The Believer takes a look at the paradox of Nelson Algren.
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The School of Life
"There is something ersatz, if not quite fraudulent, about [Alain] de Botton's entire intellectual enterprise." At The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lisa Levy throws down the gauntlet.