Mark Dimunation was on the committee that selected the 88 books for the Library of Congress’s current “Books That Shaped America” exhibit. Recently he did an interview with NPR‘s Lynn Neary in which he explained how he arrived at his decisions to include such works as Goodnight Moon, The Joy Of Cooking, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The Books That Shaped America
Alex Karras Remembered
Bill Morris, clearly maneuvering for the title of Motor City Poet Laureate, follows up his piece on Detroit’s comeback with a vivid account of Lion legend Alex Karras. “Karras will always be a pink giant with a towel wrapped around his waist,” Morris writes.
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Holy Land
In the 1880s, a group of rural Illinoisans formed a Christian sect that believed that a local woman, Dorinda Beekman, was the new Jesus Christ. When Mrs. Beekman died, a follower of hers claimed that her spirit lived inside him; as the new leader of the sect, he moved his followers into a barn and named it Heaven. At The Paris Review Daily, Dan Visel looks back on this odd chapter of history, as well as the novel it inspired. (Related: Eric Shonkwiler on the literature of the Midwest.)
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The Atheist Had It Coming
Has something dreadful happened at the bus stop? Are you running late for the revival? These are a few of the many ways to tell whether or not you're actually living inside of a short story by Flannery O'Connor.
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The Marriage Plot Problem
Have novels about love lost their gravitas as women's liberation and divorce culture have taken over? Adelle Waldman doesn't think so. In The New Yorker, she defends the timelessness of the marriage plot. "As long as marriage and love and relationships have high stakes for us emotionally, they have the potential to offer rich subject material for novelists, no matter how flimsy or comparatively uninteresting contemporary relationships seem on their surface." Pair with: Our Jeffrey Eugenides essay on writing The Marriage Plot, which is referenced several times in Waldman's essay.
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Who You Gonna Call?
After the death of Harold Ramis, it seems only fitting to read Esquire's oral history of Ghostbusters. Dan Aykroyd initially wanted it to be an intergalactic drama, yet he and others were happy with how it turned out. "People in the paranormal field loved it. It gave focus to their work," Aykroyd said.
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The Graphic Novel Warhorses
Alexander Chee posts the list of texts he used to teach his seminar on the graphic novel at Amherst - the graphic novel “warhorses,” as he calls them - and explains why they are the essential books for those interested in getting to know the form. (via The Rumpus)
Their selections are generally toward the positive and progressive. If they were being really honest, they should include such stuff as Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman and The Turner Diaries.