Philosopher and flower hater Slavoj Žižek comes late to the “let’s discuss The Wire‘s greater cultural significance” party, but he does bring some excellent points with him. For the record, he doesn’t believe it’s the greatest TV series of all time. And the entire thing is worth hearing if only for an in-depth analysis of this [NSFW] scene.
Žižek’s Take on Baltimore
Lux Fiat
“Language is more direct, open, unself-conscious, precise, and human. It doesn’t belong to me anymore but to the atmosphere, and this makes me happy.” Henri Cole on having his poetry projected onto buildings by Jenny Holzer.
2012’s Most “Looked Up” Words
According to the Merriam-Webster editors, the two most “looked up” words of 2012 were “capitalism” and “socialism.” Other words in the top ten? “Bigot,” “democracy,” and “meme.”
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FictionDaily
FictionDaily tales a page from Arts and Letters Daily and posts links to pieces of fiction found online in three different categories (long, short, and genre) every day.
O Pioneer!
Audiobook fans take note: Our Millions original ebook The Pioneer Detectives by Konstantin Kakaes is now available from Audible.com.
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Filming in the Fourth Dimension
Guillermo del Toro’s next film will bring us to Tralfamadore. He is adapting Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five with Charlie Kaufman writing the script. “I love the idea of the Tralfamadorians to be ‘unstuck in time,’ where everything is happening at the same time. And that’s what I want to do,” del Toro told The Daily Telegraph.
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The Best of Young Brazil
“Tracing the journey of a mediocre actor and Holocaust survivor ‘touched by some mysterious higher design’ as he forges and impersonates his way through the war and then back to the city of his birth, the story is part Samuel Beckett and part Isaac Bashevis Singer, with a sudden final bolt of O. Henry. It has the flavour of a morality tale, but what’s most fascinating to me is how difficult it is to derive a moral from it, or rather how easy it is to derive more than one and how openly they stand in conflict with each other.” Kevin Brockmeier extols the fiction of Leandro Sarmatz.