Is there a difference between journalism and advertising? Buzzfeed doesn’t seem to think so.
Mad Content
The Kite and the String
“Some people see things others cannot, and they are right, and we call them creative geniuses. Some people see things others cannot, and they are wrong, and we call them mentally ill.” The Atlantic has an excellent contribution to the age-old thesis that creativity and madness are inextricably linked–and tied, moreover, to mental illness–based in part on a sample of students at Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Pair with another essay on creativity and the “touch of madness” from our own archives.
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“I Was a Study in Cubism”
“Sitting there in my thrift-store jacket and boa with my legs spread, I was a study in cubism: lips mouthing well-bred earnest truisms about postcolonial theory, hand guiding their hand up under my skirt, it was, on a deep level, hilarious.” Chris Kraus writes about working New York’s topless hustle bars at n+1.
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He’s Got Game. Literary Game.
I could tease and build up Allison Hill‘s article on “Literary Seductions“, or I could just let the first line entice you on its own: “I once slept with a man because he gave me a copy of Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.”
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Measuring Detail Density
“Every story that works gets the level of description that it needs. Which isn’t to say that the level of description needed for every successful story is the same.” Tobias Carroll surveys the wide variety of detail density in fiction for Electric Literature.
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“Reflections on Gandhi”
Looks like George Orwell’s birthplace is going to be turned into a memorial – but to a different writer and activist. The land will be dedicated to Gandhi, who Orwell wrote about in his 1949 essay “Reflections on Gandhi.”
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