“Jo Freeman, a feminist writer and activist who worked with Firestone from the beginning, said at the memorial, ‘When I think back on Shulie’s contribution to the movement, I think of her as a shooting star. She flashed brightly across the midnight sky, and then she disappeared.'” At The New Yorker, Susan Faludi writes on the legacy of Shulamith Firestone.
Notes From the First Year
Either/Or
“An artist you love occupies a weird in-between place, where they’re somehow a little more than a father, but a little less than a neighbour. They can permanently re-organize your consciousness but they can’t sell you a Coke. You feel you know them more than anyone you actually know, which means that you don’t really know a damn thing. I feel I know Elliott Smith, but if I picture him in front of me, I find myself picturing a tiny figurine, or Mount Rushmore.” Sasha Chapin has written an intensely personal essay about Elliott Smith for Hazlitt. Here is The Millions’ own Torch Ballads & Jukebox Music column to satisfy any lingering musical urges.
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Metoosexuals
At The Daily Beast, Lizzie Skurnick writes about hip fatherhood, Jonathan Safran Foer and Michael Chabon.
Another Eggers Film?
Jonathan Demme will apparently be adapting Dave Eggers‘ Zeitoun as an animated feature for the big screen. (via)
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But is he down with ELP?
Michael Chabon is really into prog rock. And I just picked up a couple of great Emerson Lake & Palmer LPs. So now I’ve got a soundtrack for reading Telegraph Avenue, which I’m especially stoked on after our own Michael Bourne’s review of the novel, devoted as I am to the “brilliant little brushstrokes of language.”
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Contrarian
In 1952, John Steinbeck wrote that Al Capp, the cartoonist and Lil’ Abner creator, might well have been the best writer working in the world at the time. In the Times, Andy Webster reviews a new biography of Capp, which reveals that underneath it all lay “a toxic chip on his shoulder.”
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My Struggle: Special Editions
When all is said and done, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series will consist of six published volumes. In light of the overwhelmingly positive reception for the epic Norwegian books – which have garnered heaps of praise around these parts – Archipelago Books is raising money to produce a special, hardcover edition of each installment.