Wilco appeared in a Popeye comic strip, and they also released an animated music video featuring the sailor, Olive Oyl, and Bluto.
Yankee Spinach Foxtrot
Whatever was wrong with Hemingway
In the wake of Jonathan Franzen‘s much discussed New Yorker essay on Edith Wharton, Laura Miller defends readers who look to an author’s life to aid their understanding of a given work: ” Byron’s clubfoot, Flannery O’Connor’s lupus, Coleridge’s opium addiction and whatever was wrong with Hemingway do interest many readers because these factors shaped the life experiences from which the great work sprang.”
An Experimental Review of an Experimental Translation
Matthew Jakubowski’s “experimental review” of Yoko Tawada’s Portrait of a Tongue is unlike anything you’ve read in months, and I promise you that.
There Once Was an Astronaut from Nantucket
Forget learning how to fly, better practice your haiku and limerick writing skills. NASA applicants are asked to write a tweet, limerick or haiku. Is Colonel Chris Hadfield to blame?
Imagination, Memory, a Dictionary
Would Vladimir Nabokov have considered you a good reader? Take this little quiz and find out for yourself. Then, allow Garth Risk Hallberg to explain to you why Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is difficult, but well worth the effort.
Our Sources are Reliable
Wikipedia states that its ultimate mission is to collect all the knowledge in the world. The biases of its users may earn the site a few jabs, but if a number of studies which compare the site’s articles to those of professional encyclopedias are reliable indicators, its content is accurate enough to satisfy the needs of most users. But now the whole project may be in trouble for a simple and very odd reason — it’s apparently done so well that most of its contributors have gone home.
Brexit Blues
Recommended Reading: Jen Calleja offers a reading list to soothe your Brexit blues at The Quietus. “Like many people, I went through the five stages of Brexit – ‘oh well’, manic laughter, crying, rage, existential despair – in one day, and in the days that followed felt numb, nauseous, in doubt. But now it’s time to climb out of the mourning pit and work even harder than before at holding on to a European identity and keeping channels open to personal and literary dialogues with our European neighbours.”