“Would I have carried myself with the same swagger, or faced adversity with such feminine resolve, without Albertine as my guide?…I was drawn to a striking, remote face—rendered violet on black—on a dust jacket proclaiming its author ‘a female Genet.’ It cost 99 cents, the price of a grilled cheese and coffee at the Waverly Diner, just across Sixth Avenue. I had a dollar and a subway token, but after reading the first few lines I was smitten—one hunger trumped another and I bought the book.” Patti Smith introduces Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin, recently rereleased by New Directions.
“A female Genet”
Against Capital Punishment
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Introducing Stephen King
It seems slightly incredible that anyone doesn’t know who Stephen King is, but sometimes “it’s precisely those whom we imagine we know, in broad stereotypical terms, who require introductions,” as Joyce Carol Oates put it. Luckily, The Oyster Review has provided a handy reader’s guide to Stephen King, covering his works from Carrie to On Writing.
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If I Were a Boy
“I like a lot of things about being a woman, but there are times and ways it’s a prison, and sometimes I daydream about being out of that prison.” The Guardian has a crack Rebecca Solnit essay about clothing, gender, and of course, mansplaining. Pair with our review of Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby.
“Neglect everything else.”
“I’ve got to be writing. I have a few ways to make sure I can carve out time. Part one: Neglect everything else. Part two: Get disciplined.” David Mitchell writes about writing and the poetry of James Wright for The Atlantic. Pair with his story in tweets, “The Right Sort,” and Brian Ted Jones‘s Millions review of The Bone Clocks.
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Competence without comprehension
If you read one piece on early computer scientist Alan Turing that’s come out in celebration of his 100th birthday last Saturday (if you were wondering about Friday’s Google Doodle) you might do very well to make it this one in the Atlantic on how his reading of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution influenced his work and continues to shape the way we work with computers. It’s also about the limits of artificial intelligence.
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