As Rachel Syme points out, the person who made the Spotify playlist of every song mentioned in Patti Smith’s Just Kids deserves a free drink or two.
Just Kids Playlist
Cursing at Poets
At The Collagist, Kyle Beachy imagines the emperor Augustus saying to the poet Horace, "You and your kind are fucked!" "The Extent of Our Decline" is one of number of essays appearing in the collection I co-edited, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, coming in March from Soft Skull.
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Favorite Debuts
Tin House assembles a panel to name its favorite debut novels and collections of the year. Swamplandia! and We the Animals get tapped, but some lesser known titles also make the cut.
Very Brief Respites from the Darkness
Want to learn filmmaking from a self-proclaimed "soldier of cinema"? Then sign up for a class with Werner Herzog. The enigmatic director, whose films include Grizzly Man and Fitzcarraldo, announced he'll be teaching a course in the summer through the online provider Masterclass.
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The Paris Review Interviews Ursula K. Le Guin
One year after The Millions interviewed Ursula K. Le Guin, the author is interviewed by The Paris Review. Causation or correlation: you decide.
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New Zadie
Here's a book that's sure to be included in our second-half installment of our Most Anticipated books: Zadie Smith's NW, which traces the lives of several people who make it out of one of Northwest London's housing estates. The promotional copy calls it a "delicate, devastating novel of encounters."
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Leave It To TV
Recommended Reading: this piece from Electric Literature on how 80s television broached topics that we’re still afraid to talk about today. Here’s a bonus piece on reality television, as well.
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