1. Research a social issue. 2. Start a blog. 3. ??? 4. Become a public intellectual! Or not.
Four Easy Steps
We’re Just Kids
Practically everyone with a pulse loves Patti Smith. Celebrate Sunday by listening to her speak about Virginia Woolf’s cane, Charles Dickens’s pen, and a few other literary talismans. Here’s a handy Spotify playlist which gathers every song from Smith’s award-winning memoir Just Kids.
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The Pope of Trash Tours America
It’s only fitting that Baltimore’s City Paper has an exclusive excerpt from Carsick, the new book by Charm City’s Chosen Son, John Waters. After all, they did offer him some of their weed. Meanwhile, the Pope of Trash recently invited New York Magazine on a hitchhiking ride through Manhattan, his home away from home.
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Of the Tribe
More than ever, we need literature that gives Westerners a compelling entrée into—a way of better understanding—the lives of war-and-terrorism fraught regions. Over at Bloom, T.L. Khleif, recent recipient of a Rona Jaffe award, writes about Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon, a collection that immerses readers in the tribal areas of Pakistan prior to the rise of the Taliban. Among other notable honors, Ahmad joins the pantheon of late-blooming male authors who would not have ever published were it not for the stubborn encouragement of their wives.
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Pictorial Gateways
What is the best approach for creating a book cover? Over at Capatult, Tanwi Nandini Islam considers the best book cover for her debut novel, Bright Lines. Also check out this comparison of U.S. and U.K. book covers.
Coda
Sad that Mad Men is over? We’ve got just the thing. Back in 2012, our own Hannah Gersen compiled a list of ten books to read when a given season — or, in this case, the series — comes to an end.
A Sense of Danger
Recommended Listening: Renata Adler’s Longform podcast on writing routines and the need for acquiring a sense of danger.
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The second paragraph made me check out. We’re less educated than we were forty or fifty years ago? There isn’t a single example of a public intellectual writing today who is as intelligent or well read or profound as those titans of yesteryear because…what, human beings now are just dumber? Please.