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
Women’s Artistic Genius
Over at Public Books, Katie Fitzpatrick writes that Dana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others is a novel on women’s artistic genius. Pair with Jason Arthur’s review of the novel.
Reimagining Biography
“I’m drawn to books that deal in fragments and digressions, authors that patch together something larger from these pieces while also letting them stand on their own.” Sam Stephenson writes about “reimagining what a biography can look like” and reading Tennessee Williams: Notebooks, edited by Margaret Bradham Thornton, in a piece for The Paris Review. He also mentions Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, which Tyler Gillespie recently reviewed for The Millions.
It Might as Well Be Sentient
This is really happening: In February, an IBM-programmed computer will take on former champions (including Ken Jennings) in three games of Jeopardy. (via)
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Langewiesche on the Chilean Miners
The Outlaw Sea author William Langewiesche has a new ebook out in the “Single” format, Finding the Devil: Darkness, Light, and the Untold Story of the Chilean Mine Disaster, about the 2010 disaster that left 33 miners trapped for nearly two months.
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