Robert Krulwich takes on two very different types of “nothing.” As he illustrates through the invocation of Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, and outer space, “nothing” is a lot more complicated than you might initially believe.
Nothing Is Not Like Nothing
To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway
Aaron Sorkin is writing the first Broadway production of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. To prepare, Michael Bourne’s essay introduces us to the real Atticus Finch.
The Hunted
Veterans of writing workshops will know that a good story has a heavy dose of conflict. One can add it to a story in many ways, but one of the best and most reliable is to add a predator, either in the form of a threatening organisation or an animal or person with malicious intent. At the Ploughshares blog, Year in Reading alum Megan Mayhew Bergman reflects on predatory literature.
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Every height of brow
Putting aside for a moment the racist phrenological roots of the terms “highbrow” and “lowbrow,” here’s an interesting conversation on what the difference between them means for literature now. For a historical take, check out this graphic from a 1949 edition of LIFE magazine, which taught me a real gentleman wears fuzzy tweed, and iceberg lettuce is never in style.
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The Lorax Mourns Another Tree
Readers across the country are mourning a fallen Monterey cypress tree, said to have inspired the classic Dr. Seuss book The Lorax.
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