The Occupy Wall Street movement has been going on for seven months now, and it’s the subject of a new book entitled The Occupy Handbook. Over at The Daily Beast, you can check out an excerpt in which The Big Short author Michael Lewis interviews himself about his thoughts on the occupation.
“I think we could create a run on a bank.”
“Gaza, Timna, my Valley girl / who spilled me in broad daylight.”
James Lasdun, whose forthcoming memoir was covered by yours truly in our Great Second-Half 2012 Book Preview, has a new poem in Poetry Magazine. Read it if you like cool things.
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Ancient Welsh Book To Be Made Available Online
A 13th century Welsh book originally written by monks on pages of animal skin has finally been made available online thanks to the country's National Library. The ancient Book of Aneirin contains the Gododdin, one of the oldest poems ever written in the language.
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Break-Up Letter
"Did not really sleep: no Xanax / yesterday, which means I won’t sleep, / then the next night is usually OK, / Xanax or no. It’s Christmas Eve / in Spain, the important day. We’ll / break Dorota’s wafer. My mood / is less good than yesterday when / I would call it ‘normal’." A few new poems by Kathryn Maris at 3:AM Magazine.
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They Put a Spell on Her
“Maybe I could find some peace there, or a husband. Maybe it would be like going home.” Katherina Grace Thomas writes for Guernica about Nina Simone's three beautiful years in Liberia during the 1970s. See also: Bill Morris on the Hollywood biopic.
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You Do the Math
This week we learned Gary Shteyngart is at work on a memoir. This week is also when the annual Dachshund Spring Fiesta takes place in Washington Square Park. Has viral marketing reached its nadir?
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Borges, Writing and God
"When I have an idea that will later, sadly, become a story or a poem, I have a sensation of receiving something. But I do not know if that “something” is given to me by something or someone or if it bursts out on its own." An excerpt from Borges's conversations with the Argentinian poet and essayist Osvaldo Ferrari on writing, memory, and God is now available on The New York Review of Books blog.
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“Like church bells rung by wild sugar high children”
"Perhaps it’s a sign that our literary culture is not quite so ailing that Smith managed to make a space for NW, to clear a third path, one that meanders through Willesden, through time, and through the mind." Our own Emily M. Keeler on realism and Zadie Smith.
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