Philip Connors‘ essay about his brother, published in Lapham’s Quarterly, is truly heartbreaking.
“The dead don’t care about much”
The Alfar
If you run into trouble in Iceland, blame the elves. 54.4 percent of Icelanders believe in the invisible creatures, and elves cause environmental protest today. "Beliefs in misfortune befalling those who dare to build in elf territory is so widespread and frequent that the Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration has created a five-page 'standard reply' for press inquiries about elves," Ryan Jacobs writes for The Atlantic. Pair with: our essay on Icelandic writer Sjón.
From Abkhazia to Zimbabwe
"[W]e can confirm that there is no place on Earth (not even Antarctica) that literature isn’t written." Michael Barron, the U.S. literary editor for Culture Trip, curates "The Global Anthology," an online project showcasing more than 220 pieces of literature from all over the world written in or translated into English (via Moby Lives).
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Are You Ready for Some (Writing About) Football?
A whole heap of talented writers got together for American Short Fiction’s NFL Preview. Of particular note: check out Year in Reading alum Michael Schaub opine on his two great loves: “Texas and crushing disappointment.”
We Need to Lie Down
“But migraines! Everyone relishes a migraine. They have a literal aura! Migraines foster the sort of pure narcissism that only intense, essentially benign pain can. We sufferers (that’s how it’s described, “migraine sufferer”) feel it is meet and right that the migraine should be dramatized in films like Pi or White Heat; this strengthens the perception that migraines are the hallmark of geniuses, or at least psychopaths. Joan Didion writes about them; of course she does.” Sadie Stein on the allure of the headache to end all headaches.
Hotel Reviews Reviewed
Year in Reading Alum Alexander Chee reviews Rick Moody’s latest release, Hotels of North America. “The present is too cruel for him, and yet he cannot change it, so there is this instead, sentence by sentence, a nod to the past that is really a nod to his own past. A conflation of his nostalgia for the days of his sexual attractiveness and the unencumbered power of white men, all of it dressed up as a love for old words.” To hear more from Moody, check out our recent interview with him.
The Art of Showing Off
If you enjoy showing the world how much you like to read, you’re in luck: The Paris Review and the LRB are asking people to submit photos of themselves reading either magazine as part of their new contest. All you have to do is post the image on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #ReadEverywhere, and they’ll pick out the top images. The grand prize is one vintage issue of The Paris Review from every decade it’s been around, along with an artwork by Peter Campbell and a vintage LRB cover print.
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