Ever since The Rumpus began reviewing albums, you knew the day would come when they’d review Vanilla Ice. (If you’re wondering, the writer tackled his major label debut.)
The Great White Hope
Doug Rickard’s Google Photography
Photographer Doug Rickard employs an interesting technique for his “A New American Picture” series: Google Street View. Check out the shots he took while he “virtually [drove] the unseen and overlooked roads of America, to find bleak places that are forgotten, economically devastated, and abandoned.”
Ur Doing It Rong
"Skipping or skimming parts of a narrative should not only be expected but encouraged, particularly if an author is writing without clarity or purpose or showing off. Life’s too short to slog through some smarty-pants attempt to demonstrate a mastery of mechanical engineering or botany." Adam Kirsch and Anna Holmes face off for The New York Times Bookends column about whether there are right and wrong ways to read a book.
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Political Lit
Patrice Hutton writes on Obama, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and politics at Ploughshares. You could also read Alex Engebretson’s thoughts on Robinson’s singular vision.
Disappearing Welsh
If there existed a trophy for the ugliest-looking but prettiest-sounding language, then the 721,700 living Welsh speakers would boast more championships than Alabama’s football team. Yes, the Welsh. They of the villages Llangefni and Llanfairfechan. (To say nothing of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.) Wouldn’t it be a shame for such a language to disappear? For writing in this language to stop being published? Stanford’s Cynthia Haven thinks so.
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A Classic of the Future
"The thriller, set in a dystopian future where women and girls can kill men with a single touch, was the favourite on a shortlist that included former winner Linda Grant and Man Booker-shortlisted Madeleine Thien." Naomi Alderman’s The Power has become the first speculative work to nab the Baileys prize for women’s fiction, reports The Guardian, noting that the judges said Alderman's book would be "a classic of the future." See also: a few years back we highlighted a collaboration between Alderman and Year in Reading alum Margaret Atwood, a comic zombie novel that you can still read in its entirety here.
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“At once sensuous and crisp”
Last week, I wrote about the new Philip Marlowe novel by Benjamin Black, aka Year in Reading alum John Banville. Over the weekend, Banville published an essay in The Guardian about writing the iconic character, whom he describes as “one of the immortals.”
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Not What You Said Before
A couple weeks ago, Matt Ashby and Brendan Carroll argued in a Salon piece that David Foster Wallace, who wrote an essay about the television and irony back in the early ‘90s, presciently diagnosed the danger of snark in our own age. Now Peter Finocchiaro, a senior editor at Salon, argues instead that we need irony more than we ever have. You could also read A-J Aronstein’s notes from the DFW Symposium.
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DeLillo Reads in Brooklyn
Speaking of Point Omega, here's Vanity Fair's write-up of a rare DeLillo bookstore appearance, complete with conspiracy theorists and a fainting fangirl. It was sort of like a visit to the World's Most Photographed Barn.