Looking for a summer pen pal or five? Our friends at The Rumpus have put together a program in which you write one letter and receive five in return. Act fast: participating letters must be postmarked no later than today.
Five for the Price of One
Nobel Odds
Bob Dylan is a 25-1 dark horse, while Peter Handke looks good at 201-1; place your bets now. (via GalleyCat)
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An American Poem
"I offer you a moody campaign!" Illustrator Nathan Gould revisits the 1992 presidential election, in which badass feminist (and really great writer) Eileen Myles ran as an "openly-female" write-in candidate.
War and Peace and the Gita
Recommended reading: The New York Review of Books reviews at Richard Davis's The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography and the way centuries of politics can alter our interpretations of religious texts.
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Generation Hipster
In case you missed it: how to live without irony.
Crime and Punishment and Singing
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is getting the musical treatment, and though "it does not seem the most likely candidate to provide musical fun for all the family" for a long list of reasons - "heavy drinking, prostitution, a double axe murder and hours of psychological torment" - we're already planning our trips to Moscow for the premier. This is also a good opportunity to revisit the debate over who's greater, Dostoevsky or Tolstoy?
For the Grammarians
Who or whom? Which or that? Jon Gingerich has helpfully assembled a list of "20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes."
Hey, Hub Fans
Perhaps the best piece of baseball writing ever put to paper (duly praised here), John Updike's "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" about Ted Williams is being released in a slim, stylish volume from Library of America this week.
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