The VQR‘s last issue, “The Soviet Ghost,” was one of the most heart-wrenching reading experiences I’ve had in a long time. Now it’s got a series of video interviews with Chernobyl workers to seriously depress (and also greatly inform) you all over again.
“It tasted like iron and foam was coming out of our mouths”
Literary Map of Manhattan
An interactive literary map of Manhattan, at The New York Times Book Review: “Here’s where imaginary New Yorkers lived, worked, played, drank, walked and looked at ducks.” (via The Rumpus)
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Press Start
Readers of the 1960s and 70s ran into many people who worried that writers were learning from television. In 2015, the concern is slightly different — are writers taking cues from video games? At the Ploughshares blog, Matthew Burnside tackles the game-ification of books.
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More Barthes
In part because I loved Sam Anderson’s riff on Barthes in this weekend’s NYT Magazine so much, I was thrilled to see Maud Newton tweet this link this 2010 article on Barthes’s handwriting, featuring a slideshow of note cards Barthes used to compose his Mourning Diary.
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Kindle Library Lending
Yesterday, Amazon announced “Kindle Library Lending,” a new feature coming later this year that will allow users to go to their local libraries and “check out” books to their Kindle. The eBooks can be kept for about the same amount of time as a normal library book. The users can take notes in the margin, which, if they decide to buy the book or check it out again, will still be there. Technology!
Book Art V. White Supremacy
A controversial new book art exhibit is set to open at the Mansfield Library of the University of Montana on January 7th. The show, “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate,” comprises works by 100 artists all of which are made out 4000 books published by a white supremacist organization, The Church of the Creator, and sold to the Montana Human Rights Network by a disaffected member. Read the strange story of the genesis of the exhibition and see some of the works here.
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Trump, a Fable
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Following Oscar
“To translate the power of Tish and Fonny’s love to the screen in Baldwin’s image is a dream I’ve long held dear. Working alongside the Baldwin Estate, I’m excited to finally make that dream come true.” Oscar-winning Moonlight director Barry Jenkins is adapting James Baldwin‘s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk for the screen, says The Hollywood Reporter. (He’s also bringing Colson Whitehead‘s The Underground Railroad to visual life as well.)
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Looking for America
Recommended Viewing: Photographer Alec Soth and writer Brad Zellar’s LBM Dispatch, “an irregularly published newspaper of the North American ramblings.” The New Yorker has a gallery of 14 of Soth’s haunting photos that capture the fleeting spirit of America.
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