The London Review of Books made Jenny Diski watch and review Downton Abbey. Let’s just say she and our own Garth Risk Hallberg could probably have a nice debate about it.
Let’s Find a Way to Make this Debate Happen
Social Poetry
“Shelley once called poets the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world,'” but has the social role of poetry changed since Shelley’s time?
Loyal Opposition
Widely linked to already, but worth reading: James Wood on A.S. Byatt‘s The Children’s Book in the LRB. A mixed review that nonetheless makes me want to read the book is, for me, one mark of a good critic.
Concealing Horrors
“According to David Means and his debut novel, Hystopia, [classic war novels] aren’t simply about confronting the horrors of war, but also about concealing them, hiding them under a layer of rationalizations and wishful thinking that often simplifies their lawless anarchy and finds sense, meaning and purpose where there’s little.” Over at Electric Lit, Simon Chandler reviews David Means’s Hystopia.
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Sublimely Bad?
Are you lover or writer of florid longwinded codswollop? The Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest might be for you.
Writing the Self
Laura Bennett writes for Slate about how personal essays are taking over the internet. “I think there is just a very fine line between providing a platform for these writers and exploiting them,” says one editor.
Moment Four
Who better to review a new sci-fi book than Ursula Le Guin? The Guardian editors couldn’t think of a better candidate either. She reviewed the new story collection Three Moments of an Explosion by the English writer China Miéville. Sample quote: “Pastiche, when present, is so skilful that it can go unnoticed.” You could also read our own Bill Morris on discovering Miéville’s work.
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The End of Wall Street
In New York, Gabriel Sherman checks in on Wall Street and finds that the big money culture may be gone for good. “There has been a growing recognition on Wall Street that the system that had provided those million-dollar bonuses was built on a highly unstable foundation.”
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