In The Guardian, Sam Leith reviews Holy Sh*t: A History of Swearing, a new book by Melissa Mohr. In it, Mohr argues that swearing just ain’t what it ****ing used to be, man.
‘Bout Goddamn Time
The Singer’s Gun on the Indie Next Highlights List
Congratulations to our very own Emily St. John Mandel, whose second novel, The Singer’s Gun, is included, along with 19 other books, in the 2010 Indie Next List Highlights. Jason Hafer of Wolfgang Books says: “The Singer’s Gun is a taut, restrained book with a quick hook and a long pull. It is a moving and mysterious work, wholly authentic.”
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Slanting Light and Seedy Motels
“In noir, the problem is not an individual: the problem is the world.” Over at Electric Literature, Nicholas Seeley advocates for the efficacy of noir as a protest genre. Here’s a piece from The Millions’s Hannah Gersen that argues for Bartleby, The Scrivener as another surprising example of protest literature.
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“They’d slice you open on their own time”
Recommended Reading: “The Cage of You” by Kerry Howley.
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Reading about Reading
Recommended Reading: Clare Beams writes for Ploughshares about the effect of reading a story in which someone reads a story.
“An exile among exiles”
82-year-old Cuban poet Lorenzo Garcia Vega reflects upon his years of exile in the Latin American Herald Tribune.
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Letter to Harlem
Over at Catapult, Morgan Jerkins writes on calling Harlem home. As she puts it, “Blackness is not one specific characteristic. It is many things, things that I have yet to discover. It means that different variations of blackness can find home in one another.”
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The Brief Wondrous Influences of Junot Díaz
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao author Junot Díaz lists the movies, TV shows and books that most influenced him at Vulture.
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