Jessica Love explores a little of the science behind every weary reader’s nemesis: zoning out.
Analyzing the Scumbag Brain
Cursing at Poets
At The Collagist, Kyle Beachy imagines the emperor Augustus saying to the poet Horace, “You and your kind are fucked!” “The Extent of Our Decline” is one of number of essays appearing in the collection I co-edited, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, coming in March from Soft Skull.
●
●
Who Can You Trust Anymore?
A Russian publisher has stooped to a new low: it added “fake quotes from fake newspapers on the cover of a … novel released this summer.” That’s not all, either. Apparently the publishers are trying to bill the book as a “Swedish” crime novel even though it was actually written by a Russian under a pseudonym.
●
●
Jane Eyre: En Pointe
Choreographer Cathy Marston explains the challenges behind translating Jane Eyre for the stage in the American Ballet Theatre's new production.
●
●
●
Another Dossier
“Part of what I realize now I was doing in Proxies was to integrate the incongruous aspects of my self: the child of the truck driver and Primitive Baptist self, the queer intellectual poet self, the professor without an office self, the prizewinner who was ‘midcareer’ before he was ’emerging,’ the middle-aged man at the entry-level rungs of the gig economy.” Go check out this interview with Brian Blanchfield over at The Rumpus. This is the second Blanchfield interview we’ve told you about, both worth taking a look.
A Cure for Writer’s Block
“Don’t discount the two greatest cures for [writer’s] Block: plagiarism and suicide.” Joshua Cohen dispenses some curious advice to writers at Ask the Paris Review.