The latest installment of #LitBeat involves musings on puritanical projection, the phrases “ass-banging” and “mucus flaps” and a least one instance of the word “boner.” Our correspondent was there for The New Inquiry read along of Millions contributor Mike Thomsen’s new book, Levitate the Primate: Handjobs, Internet Dating, and Other Issues for Men.
#LitBeat gets weird in a basement.
Tir gan teanga, tir gan anam
If you missed the worldwide celebration of Irish literary greats on St. Patrick’s Day, you can make up for it with these podcasts of classic Irish writers at The Guardian.
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Critic-in-Chief
“She could be a diva, says this source, ‘but in a way I fucking admire it. The world would be a sorrier place without divas.’” For New York magazine, Boris Kachka on the drama behind Michiko Kakutani‘s departure from The New York Times and what her absence means for the world of books. Consider also: our own Matt Seidel‘s rogue’s gallery of prominent critics.
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So Happy For You
Is envy really the worst form of pettiness, as Kierkegaard suggested? Maybe. The great Roman philosopher Cicero had his own, fairly radical thoughts on envy — namely, that “compassion and envy are consistent in the same man; for whoever is uneasy at any one’s adversity is also uneasy at another’s prosperity.”
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And So It Goes
Before he died, Kurt Vonnegut gave the go-ahead that has allowed Charles Shields to construct And So It Goes, an incisive, gossipy page-turner of a biography, even if it’s hard to tell just how authorized this book really is.
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Times: New Film and Book Claim Five New J.D. Salinger Books to Be Published Starting in 2015
The Times is reporting that a new film and companion book (Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno) “include detailed assertions that Mr. Salinger instructed his estate to publish at least five additional books — some of them entirely new, some extending past work — in a sequence that he intended to begin as early as 2015.” One of the books is said to include a retooled version of Salinger’s unpublished (but available at the Princeton library) story “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans.” Kristopher Jansma (The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards) wrote about the story for us in 2011. Bonus Link: Garth Risk Hallberg on Salinger’s legacy.
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What Is Camp?
You may have watched the Met Gala this week with a mix of horror, fascination, and one nudging complaint: That's not camp!
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Waiting for Lunch Break
“[YOU can only speak to what you experienced outside several seconds after your coworker entered the building, but several seconds before YOU yourself reached your cubicle. YOU do not know if it is in fact still raining out. YOU say nothing and are forever plagued by the unknowable nature of the immediate present.]” These short existentialist plays starring you and your coworkers are sure to stir up some feelings of gloom, doom, and familiarity.