Recommended Reading: Sink Review.
Sink Review
Pushed Out of View
Over at The Guardian, Charlotte Jones takes issue with the recently announced sequel of Pride and Prejudice. The book by Terri Fleming will focus on the life of Mary Bennett, a character who is deliberately neglected by Jane Austen. As Jones puts it, “Lizzie only has space in the book for a remarkable interior life because her sisters do not. Even beautiful Jane is a bit insipid – a fact Austen knowingly plays with, as her eventual engagement to Bingley is briefly threatened by Jane’s reticence.”
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Toni Morrison Changed the Literary Canon
Read our own Kaila Philo’s essay on Toni Morrison’s new book The Origin of Others and then pair it with Nell Irvin Painter’s reflection on ‘Toni Morrison’s Radical Vision of Otherness.’ “Morrison’s history of Othering represents an intervention in history on several fronts. Although the theme of desegregating the literary canon reappears in The Origin of Others, times have changed since Playing in the Dark. Surely thanks to the more multicultural, multiracial canon that Morrison helped foster, no respectable version of American literature today omits writers of color.”
On the Auction Block
It exists! The long-lost letter from Neal Cassady that inspired Jack Kerouac to write On the Road will be auctioned next month at Christies, ending an 18-month-long battle over its ownership and another 60-year-long battle over its existence. As Kerouac said, “It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better’n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves.”
Sun Ra’s True Birthday
Seth Colter Walls shares some Sun Ra tracks while commenting on the conclusion of his Arkestra’s tour in Lincoln Center. As always, any piece about the musician is enriched with a reading of Jake Adam York’s poem, “At Sun Ra’s Grave.”
The 80-page Rule
How do you know if the book you’re writing is going to fly or flop? Try writing the first 80 pages without worrying about the outcome as Meg Wolitzer does. “Eighty pages is enough pages for a writer to feel she’s accomplished something, but it’s not so many pages that, if she decides to put aside the book, she’ll feel as if she’s wasted her life,” she told the Daily Beast for its “How I Write” series. It must work because we loved The Interestings.
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Emily St. John Mandel on the Cyclical Nature of Pandemics
Our own Emily St. John Mandel on her 2014 novel: "I think the unfortunate reality is that every few years Station Eleven will seem horribly relevant."
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Poetry As Enchantment
“The magical aspect of poetry does not diminish the value of critical scrutiny. Scholarship has clarified the meaning of poetry. The point is rather that an essential part of poetry’s power has little connection to conceptual understanding. Poetry proffers some mysteries that lie beyond paraphrase.” Dana Gioia with a beautiful essay on the enchantment of poetry for The Dark Horse. Check out our extensive On Poetry archive and continue your journey of poetic enchantment.
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Meet Jesus Makes The Shotgun Sound
What do SoCal’s “vapid consumerism, gang violence, and social apathy” sound like? Jesus Makes The Shotgun Sound! Brace yourself and have a listen to their Raidohead-y latest single, “Do Not The Clothes Make The Man?!” or, if you’re looking to induce epileptic fits, try the video.
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