Could the reinvention of prolific food chronicler Ricky Rozay’s rap persona provide a guidebook for the recently exposed Jonah Lehrer? (h/t Ryan Chapman)
Or Is this Just a Silly Comparison?
Meditations on Meditations in Green
Recommended Reading: Nathaniel Rich discusses Stephen Wright’s Meditations in Green, which he says is remarkable because “it convinces you that the war never ended.” Indeed, Rich writes, the author’s debut novel “suggests that Vietnam at some point transcended the Indochina peninsula and became a mental condition, a state of being not unlike certain forms of insanity, that has become encrypted in our genetic code.”
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Peter Matthiessen, 1927-2014
Peter Matthiessen died today, according to a statement released by his publisher: “Peter Matthiessen, award-winning author of more than thirty books, world-renowned naturalist, explorer, Buddhist teacher, and political activist, died at 5:15 PM on Saturday April 5, 2014 after an illness of some months.” Matthiessen was the author most notably of two National Book Award-winning volumes, the novel Shadow Country and in non-fiction The Snow Leopard.
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Oh, and congrats, btw.
“I Didn’t Tell Facebook I’m Engaged, So Why Is It Asking About My Fiancé?” or, FB continues to make people feel a little awkward.
Combining a Murder Mystery and Immigrant Family Story with Jane Pek
Jane Pek discusses her debut novel, The Verifiers, which follows an amateur sleuth who investigates the potential suitors of lovelorn New Yorkers.
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Parting Is Blah Blah Blah
Say goodbye to Sadie Stein! Stein, who is moving on after two years as The Paris Review Daily’s correspondent, had this to say: “It is a strange thing to monetize your emotions. Anyone who writes or creates knows this. And the work one does on the Internet feels insubstantial, even by the flimsy standards of intellectual property. Any body of digital work is a funny mixture of ephemeral and immortal, and it’s hard to know how to feel about such an archive.”
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iDentity
“Up until very recently, I’d recount my online experiences with some degree of shame or sheepishness, but in this apocalyptic year of 2012, that embarrassment is beginning to fall by the wayside. I’ve been having more and more conversations with people grappling with what is gained and lost by how some of our most meaningful musical discoveries– not to mention life experiences– have happened in front of, or facilitated by, screens.” Over at Pitchfork, a new column dedicated to the intersections between digital and ordinary life – and the art these interactions can produce.
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Revisiting the Ghosts of Old Drafts with John Keene
John Keene discusses his new poetry collection, Punks, as well as his process for revisiting his older work.
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