“Don’t assume that the literal meaning of a sentence is the least important one. It’s the only important one.” Sage advice.
Know Thy Grammar
Thomas M. Disch Appendix
At Waggish, David Auerbach has published an appendix to his recent piece for The Millions on Thomas M. Disch.
Tuesday New Release Day: van den Berg, Tan, Faulks, Setterfield, Delaney
Year in Reading alum Laura van den Berg has a new book out this week, as does Amy Tan. Also out: Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks; Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield; and a memoir by YiR alum Rob Delaney. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2013 Book Preview.
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Real Life Crazy Rich Inspiration
Ahead of its mid August movie debut Kevin Kwan talks about the real life inspiration behind his Crazy Rich Asian trilogy. “But the people who know me, who have read the books, and who are also in that world in Singapore, Hong Kong, and other parts of Asia, don’t get it.” Refinery29 has more.
Vanity Fair’s Beautiful Game
Vanity Fair’s latest cover is proof that we live in an era in which men have the privilege of being just as objectified as women. Nominally a celebration of the 2010 World Cup that kicks off in South Africa in June, the magazine’s gay porn-ish cover features soccer superstars Didier Drogba of the Ivory Coast and Portugal’s Christiano Ronaldo in nothing but their flags, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. Within (oh, my stars & stripes!) you can behold the U.S.’s Landon Donovan, as well as Brazil’s Kaká, Italy’s Gianluigi Buffon, England’s Carlton Cole, Germany’s Michael Ballack–all in their undies. Cheers to you, Vanity Fair: Your enterprising shamelessness truly knows no bounds.
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Not What You Said Before
Hypocrisy is a funny thing. In theory, we all dislike it, seeing an ability to live by one’s own morals as a virtue in itself, but the fact that everybody breaks their own rules from time to time means that our aversion to hypocrisy is a little bit… hypocritical. On the Harper’s blog, Clancy Martin dissects the meaning of the fact that “we’re all hypocrites.”