Recommended Weekend Podcast: Helen DeWitt talks with Anne Strainchamps about her novel Lightning Rods, which we at The Millions loved a lot.
DeWitt Talks Lightning Rods
Tis the Season: Micro-Volunteering
Imagine how many volunteer hours you could log if volunteering was as easy as playing a game of FarmVille or watching a video on YouTube. Now it is, thanks to Ben Rigby and the other folks at Sparked (formerly The Extraordinaries). Sparked directs you to challenges suited to your skills and interests submitted by nonprofits around the country and the world who need help with brainstorming, copy editing, IT, translations, marketing, fund-raising, and more. Now you can volunteer without leaving your desk.
English Major Drama
At the Missouri Review blog, our own Tess Malone writes about the supposed death of the English major, which has lost a considerable amount of popularity in the last forty years in favor of “practical disciplines.” Among other things, she links to New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier’s Brandeis commencement speech, which I wrote about a few weeks ago.
●
●
More on Lydia Davis
●
●
Jeff Bridges to Adapt The Giver
Jeff Bridges is working to adapt Lois Lowry’s The Giver, and production is slated to begin in South Africa this fall. Bridges will play the titular Giver, and Deadline is reporting that Australian unknown Brenton Thwaites will play Jonas.
A Slow Death
Gawker.com will end operations next week – and this time it’s for good. Over at the New Yorker, Jia Solentino writes about what made Gawker singular in the online world. “A lively, difficult brand of unevenness was inherent in Gawker’s work, and this still seems to confound people: Why, if it took its work seriously, would it run ‘some of both the best and worst of 21st century journalism,’” as Salon put it, and all under the same name?”
Social Poetry
“Shelley once called poets the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world,'” but has the social role of poetry changed since Shelley’s time?
●
●
North Star
Where did George Orwell come around to socialism? Try the north of England. In a piece in Prospect Magazine, Stephen Ingle recounts the author’s journey through industrial Britain.
●
●