Apart from calling up visions of a Carver–Mailer axis of literary minimalism, these remarks by Joyce Carol Oates upon winning the Mailer Prize convince us that Mailer had quite the unflappable ego.
“Norman was the very antithesis of minimalism”
44 Issues
The New Yorker is not a magazine for the general public, writes Summer Brennan in the Literary Hub. “Because The New Yorker is nothing if not a view of the world from a comfortable vantage point. The intensity of the features is balanced by reviews of Manhattan restaurants and jokes about how busy we all are. Print magazines are tribal, and we swear our allegiance by buying them and opening them up. The New Yorker assumes that I am politically liberal and have read Chekhov’s The Seagull, and The New Yorker is right.”
Gossip, Gossip Everywhere
This essay on the proliferation of gossip in journalism is adapted from Joseph Epstein's Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit. In it, Epstein discusses the problem of "how straight-up, no-apologies public gossip has infected standard, or what once might have been called respectable, journalism."
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Pitchfork and The Dissolve
Pitchfork Media announced last week that it will begin supplemented its popular music website with a new project dedicated to “reviews, commentary, interviews, and news about the films of the moment.”
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Another Southern Girl
Is it another Beyoncé/Lemonade thinkpiece? Yes. Is it also more than that and worth your time to read? Yes. Terryn Hall at The Rumpus on Beyoncé, Erykah Badu, and being a black woman in the South: "Although Beyoncé is not ‘literary’ in a traditional sense, she’s using her power to usher in new black poetic (Warsan Shire) musical (Ibeyi, Chloe and Halley Bailey) and modeling (Jourdan Dunn, Zendaya) talent in a manner similar to that of the literary patrons of yesteryear."
Even More DFW
In honor of this weekend's U.S. Open, Grantland's Michael MacCambridge is revisiting David Foster Wallace's epic essay on Roger Federer.
The Rise of the Insta-Poet
How do I love thee? Let me turn the contrast down and put a Valencia filter on it. Instagram poets like Lang Leav and Tyler Knott Gregson may be the future of poetry–but is their work deserving of their massive followings?
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