Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland that “There’s no ‘there’ there.” If the latest novel by Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue, is any indication, not everyone agrees — the author set the book in the Oakland of 2004. At The New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog, Matt Feeney delves into the book’s racial politics.
Apparently There is a “There” There
On The Emotional Dishonesty of Having a Thick Skin
At The Nervous Breakdown, Ronlyn Domingue’s honest and thoughtful “My Horrible New York Times Review” is a must-read for any writer who’s been rejected or ridiculed lately (and, really, who hasn’t been?)
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Language is a Passport
Haruo Shirane writes for Public Books about writing and publishing in the age of English. As he explains it, “For those living in the Anglosphere, no barrier seems to stand between their world and the many other worlds that now appear at the push of a button. But for those outside that world, particularly in non-European countries, the literary and linguistic consequences of globalization in the age of English can often be severe.”
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Gives a Whole New Meaning to “Posting Up with a Book”
For those awkward outdoor situations in which you can’t overtly clutch a book to passively inform onlookers “hey, I read,” Fieldcandy has designed a tent that looks like a book.
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Boys Might Cry
Look, we get it. You’re as sad as the rest of us that Frank Ocean’s new album didn’t actually drop on Friday. Luckily, there’s a fantastic essay over at The Atlantic which examines Ocean in the context of Harper Lee and the myth of the reclusive artist: “Channel Orange, like Mockingbird, is an unapologetic masterpiece for people defining themselves at the intersection of lived experience and possibility.”
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All the Free Books Fit to Download
The new year ushered in more than soon-to-be-broken resolutions. This January 1, a vast cache of works released in 1923 entered the public domain—including tens of thousands of books. Here’s how to download them for free, and here’s what all this means for publishers and readers alike. Happy hunting.
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Guess it was too much trouble for the New Yorker to get an actual black person to write that piece.