The Southern Review’s New Digs
Truthiness and the Realish
Now that NPR has begun fact checking his work, it's come to light that David Sedaris is a liar. Or, he sort of embellishes. His work is 'realish.' So basically, he tells stories. On NPR. Which is feeling pretty sensitive abut the line between truth and truthiness after the Mike Daisey upset.
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Yuks of the North
“A Canadian author, a farmer, and a First Nations teenager went fishing. The farmer mostly sat there quietly while the author and the teenager tried to find common ground, even though the gulf between them felt massive.” A Canadian literary scene joke book.
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Sex Appeal
You may remember the brouhaha surrounding Bustle, the first website in history to market primarily to women. Now, in this week’s New Yorker, Lizzie Widdicombe profiles the website, which she describes by pointing out that “[its] articles are modest, but the ambitions of its founder, a young Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Bryan Goldberg, are not.”
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Parenthetical Power
Parentheses aren't just the mark of a lazy or verbose writer. They can also bracket personal pain in a narrative. At The New York Review of Books, Christopher Benfey explores the power of the parenthetical detail, such as Lolita's "My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three." Pair with: Vulture's "The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature."
From Football to Fiction
Rashard Mendenhall is retiring from the Arizona Cardinals in order to write, among other reasons. "The truth is, I don't really think my walking away is that big of deal. For me it's saying, 'Football was pretty cool, but I don't want to play anymore. I want to travel the world and write!'" Maybe he'll be published by another retired sports star's imprint?
Well, She Should Know
“Here is a rare recording of Flannery O’Connor reading an early version of her witty and revealing essay, ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction’”
Runways for Days
"I took my son to Paris fashion week, and all I got was a profound understanding of who he is, what he wants to do with his life, and how it feels to watch a grown man stride down a runway wearing shaggy yellow Muppet pants." Michael Chabon writes a beautiful piece for GQ about going couturing with his son, Abraham. Pair with yesterday's essay by R. J. Hernández on fashion in literary fiction.
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