Proclaiming the death of the book has been in vogue nearly as long as the book itself. Leah Price presents a short history of our pessimism for the future of the written word.
“Every generation rewrites the book’s epitaph; all that changes is the whodunit.”
B&N Partnership
Boston-based online retailer Wayfair.com has authored a major deal with Barnes & Noble. Wayfair, which sells 4.5 million products on its own site, is teaming up with Barnes & Noble to showcase some 500,000 toys, kitchenwares and other goods on the book giant’s site.
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Miéville on “Hauntology”
In a fabulously strange, illuminating, and spooky essay, China Miéville establishes the literary definition of "hauntology."
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Global Crises, International Art
Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich put together a reading list to help children understand the global refugee experience, and Kaveh Akbar compiled a list of poems from the seven countries — Iran, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria — impacted by President Donald Trump’s executive order. Meanwhile, Kieran Hebden (a.k.a. Four Tet) has been curating a Spotify playlist of music from those countries as well.
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A Lover’s Discourse
This Valentine's Day, break out the Barthes and let critical theory decide the shape and scope of your sweet nothings.
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Untethered
“Her characters sleepwalk to their certain fates through artificial pocket universes, each one seemingly constructed to satisfy the curiosity of an inhumane, omniscient narrator. Few writers have been so consistently and brilliantly unkind.” On Muriel Spark’s The Bachelors.
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RIP, Shirley Hazzard
"Ms. Hazzard’s fiction is dense with meaning, subtle in implication and tense in plot, often with disaster looming: A shipwreck tears away the parents of tiny children. A man who has waited a lifetime for a woman loses her at the last moment." Novelist Shirley Hazzard, whose several books – including The Transit of Venus and the National Book Award-winning The Great Fire – received much acclaim, has died at 85, reports The New York Times. Also worth reading, her "Art of Fiction" interview with The Paris Review from 2005.
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Get Outta Town, Pat Buchanan
"White Americans do not realize how black they are," writes Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish. If, upon reading Sullivan, you find yourself questioning your racial identity, try the blog Stuff White People Like--sure, most of it is really stuff that dinks and yuppies like (class trumps race, as Walter Ben Michaels explains at the LRB), but it might help you brush up on the ways and loves of white folks: camping, pea coats, hating your parents, Wes Anderson, diversity, sushi, standing still at concerts...
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