Remember, everybody. Running with the Olympic torch is temporary, but a misspelled tattoo is forever.
Oylmpics: A Cautionary Tale
How Long ’til Computers Start Buying Books?
Do “algorithms and online recommendations threaten to replace [publishers] as arbiters of quality”? This Economist riff on e-book publishing says so. Elsewhere, at least 20 companies are using computer software instead of human beings to write their articles.
Writing and Reading Race
Recommended Reading: Katy Simpson Smith on who can fictionalize slavery and writing across time and race. Our own Edan Lepucki writes on reading slavery in fiction.
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“A piece of ultimate Lovecraft fiction”
Watchmen and V for Vendetta author Alan Moore was interviewed recently, and among the topics discussed was Moore’s forthcoming twelve-part series Providence – which he describes as “my attempt to write what I would consider to be a piece of ultimate [H.P.] Lovecraft fiction.”
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A Light Roast, Please
File this one under “Things I Didn’t Know I Needed” — actor Paul Giamatti playing Honoré de Balzac hopped up on fifty coffees.
The Books Coming from Ukraine
Citing the cliché that people “only become interested in a country’s literature once we start bombing in” as his reason, Chad Post takes a close look at some recently published Ukrainian books.
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The Idealistic Hero
“What is missing from Testimony is the customary idealistic hero, the one last encountered in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass who doesn’t avert his eyes from suffering and sordidness, but who nevertheless is full of hope for a better future. Testimony is a corrective, an anti-epic.” Charles Simić recounts Charles Reznikoff’s long poem Testimony: The United States (1885-1915): Recitative in the NYRB.
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The Modern Office
Our own Lydia Kiesling writes for The New Yorker about workplace fiction by women. As she puts it, “If the author is a woman, workplace fiction is also domestic fiction, easily disguised as ‘chick lit,’ ‘girlfriend literature,’ or even ‘erotica.’ Regardless of the packaging, these books provide mapping, contextualizing, and rich illustration of women’s working lives.” For more of her writing, check out her essay on the San Francisco housing market for The Millions.
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