A theory of place in literature derived from Parks and Recreation? Why, Ploughshares blog, you’re too kind.
Pawnee Central
The Turnip Princess
We’re all familiar with the Grimm-style fairy tales, with their evil stepmothers and imperiled princesses. But a new collection of 19th century Bavarian folk tales has been discovered, edited, and now released in English for the first time, and they’re darker, dirtier, and involve more gender-bending than the Grimm tales. Salon talks with the tales’ translator, Maria Tatar, about their history, importance, and “the surprising ways they upend our long-standing notions of the roles of heroes and heroines in some of Europe’s oldest and most popular stories.”
●
●
#Read4Refugees
Go Jane Give organized the “#Read4Refugees” social media campaign, encouraging users to raise awareness and funds for refugee issues. Over the past month, numerous well-known authors have joined in, including Junot Díaz, Jodi Picoult, Sue Monk Kidd, and Sherman Alexie, among others.
“Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”
Powell’s Books teamed up with Rogue Ales and Spirits to create White Whale Ale. “Infused with the seafaring spirit of Moby-Dick,” White Whale Ale is sure to please any beer drinker in your family this holiday season – even if they did skip the Cetology sections of Melville’s classic.
Social Media Anxiety
Nancy Jo Sales, author of The Bling Ring, talks about her latest book, American Girls, at NPR. “In the 2 1/2 years she spent researching her book, Sales interviewed more than 200 teenage girls around the country about their social media and Internet usage. She says girls face enormous pressures to post ‘hot’ or sexualized photos of themselves online, and she adds that this pressure can make the Internet an unwelcoming environment.” You could also read Sarah Labrie’s essay on social (media) anxiety.
Talking Fails
Mark O’Connell discusses Epic Fail with Lauren Eggert-Crowe at The Rumpus. Contrary to what its title may lead you to believe, Mark’s book has been described as “expertly researched” and “wonderfully witty.”
Unlocking Agrippa
In 1992, William Gibson published Agrippa, a poem coded on a floppy disk such that after one reading it would destroy itself forever. Quinn DuPont, a PhD student studying cryptography, built an emulation of the self-destructing poem and has a challenge to cyberpunks and cryptographers: be the first person to crack the poem’s code and win a copy of every one of Gibson’s books ever published.
Books for the Trump Era
“[T]hat might be what liberal readers needs right now: Not just portraits of the Brexit and Trump-voting domestic Other, but a clearer sense of their own worldview’s limits, blind spots, blunders and internal contradictions.” The New York Times‘s Ross Douthat assembles a “Books for the Trump Era” reading list, including Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, Christopher Lasch‘s The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, and Samuel P. Huntington‘s Who Are We? The Challenges to American National Identity. You can also read our own review of Houellebecq’s latest here.
●
●
Along “The Colbert Bump”
“The Colbert Bump didn’t get so much media attention and public support because everyone wanted to talk about me and my novel. People wanted to support book culture, to say that books and writers matter, and that we should be doing everything we can to ensure their continued existence, if not their success. In short, The Book is not dead!” Our own Edan Lepucki and Stephan Eirik Clark talk about their experiences as debut authors on “The Colbert Bump,” and the piece pairs nicely with Edan and Millions staff writer Bill Morris‘s article about the many paths writers follow to publication.