“Too often, being on the left tasks you with a vigilant daily quest to avoid being tagged with snobbery. In sociological living, we place value on those works or groups that seem most likely to force a reevaluation of an exclusive or oppressive order, or an order felt to be oppressive simply because exclusive. And yet despite this perpetual reevaluation of all values, the underlying social order seems unchanged; the sense of it all being a game not only persists, but hardens.” From n + 1, the latest “Intellectual Situation”: “Too Much Sociology.”
Cultural Capital
Flummoxing Florals
With the cold front in America right now, you would never know it’s meant to be spring. To get yourself in the season, take The Guardian’s floral poetry quiz. Sample question: “What reminds Ezra Pound of ‘petals on a wet, black bough’?”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Yu, French, Stein, Smith
Charles Yu’s new collection of stories, Sorry Please Thank You, is out today, and so is Tana French’s novel Broken Harbor. Both were on our Great Second Half of 2012 Books Preview. Leigh Stein’s new book of poems, Dispatch from the Future is also in stores today, alongside Ali Smith’s There But For The in paperback.
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The Future of the Book (& the Future of the ‘Do)
Could e-books be one 2012 presidential candidate’s secret weapon? Perhaps. So, too, could a very talented hair stylist.
Harry Potter on Kindle
Pottermore is open for business. J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard books are now available on Kindle for the first time ever.
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TLAN News
Three Guys One Book takes an early look at The Late American Novel (co-edited by yours truly and featuring three Millions writers as well as a number of other literary luminaries) and sees it as a great introduction to a whole group of exciting writers. The book has been spotted on shelves in the wild, and we’ll be updating news about the book here. (Readers can also follow the book’s official Facebook page to keep up on events, reviews and other goodies.)
Copy Craze
“You’re following some cute glyph about smoking, then one about stationary, then dirty dishes and some mischievous cat—then it’s suddenly ‘Not your father’s safari jacket’ followed by pearl puddles, LIBERATOR dildos, Quaker teens, rehab, troubled teens, and more jackets. It’s like a mini-Buñuel movie! And they expect you to keep following along with Malcolm Gladwell, or whoever it is, over there to the left? Why would you? You want to shout, Hey Malcolm, can you shut up about Twitter and explain the neo-surrealist montage unfolding perversely in the margins?” The strange amalgamation that is the magazine ad column.
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