Believe it or not, there may be a connection between Walt Whitman and US drones.
As Bad As The Worst
Also Need a 4-Wheel Drive
Must be willing to perform “light, household maintenance.” Harry Bliss, an illustrator and cartoonist at The New Yorker, has purchased the former home of J.D. Salinger and will turn it into a retreat for one lucky cartoonist during February 2017. Pair with our review of J.D. Salinger: A Life, a comprehensive biography of the famously reclusive writer’s work.
Protest? I Would Prefer Not To.
In October 2011, Hannah Gersen convincingly argued that the Occupy Wall Street protests bore more than a few similarities to Bartleby, The Scrivener. Now, amid the political demonstrations going on throughout Turkey, Millions contributor Kaya Genç draws a similar parallel between Istanbul’s “Standing Man” and Herman Melville’s famous protagonist.
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“The serious critic ultimately loves his subject more than he loves his reader”
Though everyone is tired of the online critics are too nice/ do critics even matter debate cropping up everywhere as of late, Daniel Mendelsohn’s “Critic’s Manifesto” may be the best thing to come out of the conversation yet: a clear formulation of what it means to be a critic and why that matters.
Data-Mining, The Trial, and America
“Joseph K., that icon of single-lettered anonymity from Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial,” writes Tom Engelhardt for Guernica, “would undoubtedly have felt right at home in [James] Clapper’s Washington.”
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More on Banville
Yesterday I pointed out that John Banville wrote a new Philip Marlowe novel under the pen name Benjamin Black. If you’re a fan of Banville — and you live in LA — you can hear him talk about the book this Thursday at Sundance Cinemas.
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A Literary Wake
In Austin, the Harry Ransom Center and American Short Fiction are hosting a tribute event for J.D. Salinger that will include readings by Elizabeth Crane, Nick Flynn, Amelia Gray, Elizabeth McCracken, ZZ Packer, and John Pipkin.
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