“If culture is purely entertainment, nothing is of importance. If it’s a matter of amusement, an impostor can undoubtedly amuse me more than a profoundly authentic person. But if culture signifies more than this, then it’s worrying.” Sociologist Gilles Lipovetsky interviews the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa about the contemporary collapse between “high” and “low” cultures.
Civilization of the Spectacle
The 2020 Best Translated Book Awards Goes Virtual
The Best Translated Book Awards reading and ceremony will be streamed online this year.
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“The danger that is Lagos”
“Even after I realize that we are being robbed, that bullets can shatter glass, that being locked in is no help in this situation, I still feel a vague resentment at having to hand the laptop over. It’s mine. It contains my work, a week of writing, a month or more of photography, personal information. I have hesitated only a few seconds but feel as though I have just woken from a trance: briefly, I imagined myself with a bullet in my thigh, imagined myself bleeding out in traffic in Ojota.” At Granta, Teju Cole writes about living in Lagos.
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The Best Case for Cloning
A 27 pound lobster has been caught off the coast of Maine. Now, who’s going to be the first to come up with a 50 pound dab of butter?
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War and Peace a Bestseller
After 130 years, War and Peace is finally on the bestseller list. Pair with Edward Mullany’s piece on the second time he tried to read the book.
Jericho Brown and Carmen Maria Machado on the Meaning of Pride
Jericho Brown and Carmen Maria Machado examine their personal relationships to Pride, 50 years after the first Pride March.
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