Rosecrans Baldwin’s Paris I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down is set in Paris, France. But there are also 25 Parises in the USA. For “Our French Connection,” a series of features for The Morning News, Baldwin hit up four towns called Paris in America and asked locals to opine on the French way of life. You can buy the whole four part series as an epub for $3.
Paris to the power of 4
Joan
Sara Davidson’s Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion is an intimate portrait of one of America’s most revered and private writers.
Haruki Murakami: Literary Ambassador
Among Haruki Murakami’s many significant literary achievements is the fact that the author has – since the 1990s – become “responsible for triggering and fueling the Japanese literature boom in South Korea.” Indeed, by “creat[ing] bonds of shared emotions and literary sensibilities among tens of millions of people with different cultural and historical backgrounds,” writes Yoon Sang-In, “Murakami’s literary works have emerged as a great cultural asset that contributes to stability in [the East Asian] region.” (Bonus: Murakami’s latest book – which will be published in the States in 2014 – is flying off the shelves in Japan.)
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Live fo Ecruos
I’ve recommended a couple of articles in recent weeks about the new novel by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. Unfortunately, as Liam O’Brien explains at the Melville House blog, it may not be a good idea to read it, especially if you’re impressionable. Why? The book contains a hidden trove of Satanic messages. (h/t The Rumpus)
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Risk-Taker, Miracle-Maker
“Maybe the optimists are right; maybe poetry does help you live your life. And maybe they are more right than they know, and it rounds you out for death.” Andrew O’Hagan writes for The Guardian about falling in love with poetry and coming to see the poet as “a risk-taker, a miracle-maker, a moral panjandrum and a convict of the senses.”
Meet Your Professors
You’ve probably met them all: the three kinds of English professors, as defined by McSweeney’s. Our own Nick Ripatrazone writes about the fictional lives of high school teachers.