I’m not that into ballet, but if I had to be, I’d be into 1,000 frame-per-second footage of German ballet dancers prancing around to a dance-y remix of Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place.”
But Then Again, Who Wouldn’t Be?
“Surprise attacks”
Last week, I pointed to former Millions-er Emily M. Keeler’s review of Wolf in White Van, the new novel by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. Now, at Slate, Carl Wilson offers his own praise of the book, which he describes as “not the kind of rallying cry or dark comfort that Mountain Goats fans are used to, but a complex meditation.”
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Russia Debriefing
Mikhail Gorbachev is calling for an annulment of the recent Moscow elections because he’s concerned about “falsifications and rigging.” For your part, you can join the Stateside movement to echo Mr. Gorbachev’s call. Elsewhere, the Russian Socialist Movement is equally outraged. n+1 editor Keith Gessen has also translated some of the local protests.
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Out There
As a cultural center with a very different makeup than the various home bases of the publishing world, Los Angeles often gets short shrift in discussions of literary cities. At the LARB (naturally), Sarah-Jane Stratford writes about the city’s importance to speculative literature, with an emphasis on the works of Ray Bradbury. Related: Tanjil Rashid on Bradbury’s Middle East connection.
Get Bent, Collier County.
The MFA program at Florida Atlantic University launched Swamp Ape Review, a new national online literary journal. For their first print issue, which is set to publish next year, they’re accepting submissions from writers in South Florida, such as Martin, St. Lucie, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. For a nice primer on the journal’s namesake (or, rather, its alias), I direct your attentions to Bill Kearney.
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He’s Not Keen on Kids, Either
Some interesting facts about Geoff Dyer emerge from Bryan Appleyard’s profile of the essayist. Namely: shoes are banned in the Dyer abode; the man enjoys playing tennis; and he’s never had a threesome.
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Brackets Busted
How’s your bracket doing? Upsets abound not only on the hardwood but also in The Morning News’s Tournament of Books. Celebrate your victory over lesser bracketologists (or, alternately, mourn your defeat against the onslaught of superior bracketologists) with this compendium of basketball poetry compiled by the folks at the Poetry Foundation.
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Brain Food
Nearing the end of your epic NaNoWriMo novel? The good folks at Electric Literature found some music to aid your concentration.
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Bard-yoncé
Beyoncé collaborated with Forrest Gander, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, to write a poem called “Bey the Light.” You can read that over here. (Bonus: This isn’t the first time Queen B has teamed up with a prominent writer.)
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