Laura Miller wants us all to stop calling The Wire a Victorian novel, because it is in fact a television drama.
Still not bleak house.
Arrested Development Meets Academia
“Dr. Kristin M. Barton is seeking proposals for an edited volume … which will explore Arrested Development from a scholarly perspective,” reads a call for submissions on H-Net. I can see the titles of these essays now. Can’t you? “Desperation Economics: There’s Always Money in the Banana Stand” or “I Don’t Know What I Was Expecting: An Exploration of Dead Doves and Tragicomedy.”
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More Moss
The new issue of Moss Magazine, “a journal of the Pacific Northwest,” is up, including an interview with Amanda Coplin, author of The Orchardist. (The previous issue featured fiction by our own Sonya Chung.)
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Looking Grim
You could spend a long car ride thinking about about all of the books that are currently outselling Rand Paul’s newest, Our Presidents & Their Prayers: Proclamations of Faith by America’s Leaders. According to data obtained from Nielsen BookScan, Paul’s book has sold less than 500 copies in two weeks. For reference, the end of Michelle Bachmann’s ill-fated 2012 presidential campaign was foreshadowed by her book, Core of Conviction, selling just a few thousand copies in the same time that it has taken Paul’s to sell hundreds.
A Fresh Set of Obstacles
“As employers cut down on benefits and flexibility, more and more people, especially parents and those with chronic illnesses or disabilities, are getting squeezed out of ‘regular’ workplaces and into the freelance economy. What they find there is a whole new labor market that comes with a fresh set of obstacles—and some benefits, too.” On how companies and labor policy push women toward freelancing.
Boy Meets World, Boy Meets Girl
In a perfect mix of high and low art, Samuel L. Jackson performed a slam poem about Boy Meets World on The Tonight Show. “Daughter of hippies/Name of a gypsy/’Topanga,’ Corey cries.”
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All That We Love
“Maybe I [felt] a shift in responsibility when I had kids. I wanted the work I was doing, whatever it was, to be something that could be meaningful to them one day. That’s where the germ of the memoir came from. I thought that perhaps writing about my parents and where I came from would one day be helpful for my kids.” For Guernica, Christopher Kondrich interviews Tracy K. Smith about writing a memoir, the presence of David Bowie in her Life on Mars, and her reverence for the cosmic. Also check out Sophia Nguyen’s Millions review of Smith’s memoir, Ordinary Light.
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