After winning The International Design Association’s 2012 Library Interior Design Competition, MS&R won funding to convert an abandoned Walmart in McAllen, Texas into a sprawling 124,500 square foot library. McAllen now home to the United States’ largest single-story library.
2 1/2 Football Fields of Books
“When God speaks, he sounds just like David Rakoff did.”
Following a long battle with cancer, David Rakoff died Thursday night at the age of 47. Rakoff recently delivered a novel entitled Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish to Doubleday, and fans can look out for it next year. Reflections on Rakoff’s life and legacy can be read courtesy of Jason Diamond and Choire Sicha, and two of Rakoff’s best This American Life pieces can be found here and here.
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It & Co.
For The Brooklyn Rail, John Ashbery answers some questions about writing in French, crushes on boys, and the presence of “it.” As he puts it, “I’m sort of notorious for my use of the pronoun ‘it’ without explaining what it means, which somehow never seemed a problem to me.”
Dear Diary
Craig Brown recommends five published diaries for your reading pleasure.
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Well-informed ghosts
Kurt Anderson on the difference between writing a novel in first and third person voice: “Most third-person narrators are less like omniscient gods than exceedingly snoopy, well-informed ghosts. “
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James Baldwin on Film
James Baldwin was more famous for being an essayist and novelist, but he was also a film critic. At The Atlantic, Noah Berlatsky argues that Baldwin should be considered one of the best film critics for The Devil Finds Work. “Baldwin shows that criticism is art, which means that it doesn’t need a purpose or a rationale other than truth, or beauty, or keeping faith, or doing whatever it is we think art is trying to do.” For more on Baldwin, read our essay on his epiphanies.
“An American train can’t help but dream of the West”
Recommended Reading: this graphic short story by Ben Nadler and Alyssa Berg.
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“Sequence of blackouts”
Recommended Reading: this new translation of an Albert Camus play at Page-Turner.
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