What exactly happens to our brains when we laugh? Richard Restak (of The American Scholar) investigates.
Joke Science
Antidote Man
According to Smithsonian Magazine, Buzzfeed is the mortal enemy of the highbrow Lapham’s Quarterly. Regardless of which source of media you side with in the rivalry, it’s worth reading through their profile of Lewis Lapham.
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Virtual Hannah Tinti
The latest in virtual author appearances, an especially useful option for literary venues in the snowy midwest during winter: Hannah Tinti on Skype (audio and video) in Minneapolis via the Magers & Quinn “Books & Bars” Book Club series.
The Beat Drops And Rises Again
Scott Plagenhoef tracks electronica’s Phoenix-like trajectory from its overhyped beginning in the 90’s through its contemporary influence on folks like Skrillex.
Constance Garnett Gets Her Due
Sara Wheeler tells the story of Constance Garnett, an "indefatigable worker" who translated the works of Dostoevsky and Chekhov.
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“MFA Thesis (and/or Life Reevaluation)”
Did your MFA program offer impractical courses like “Problems in Modern Fiction”? At the Ploughshares blog, Rebecca Makkai offers some suggestions for more useful classes, such as “Introduction to Despair,” “Pretending You’re Talking to Terry Gross When You’re Alone in the Car,” and “The Art of the Flirty Author Photo Grimace.” Pair with: Our interview with Makkai.
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That Old Imperial Impulse
“The notion that American literature might have an imperial bent—that it might be anything other than a string of lightly co-influential works of ‘imaginative power,’ and might itself reflect our national desire to dominate—is lost on its critics, both right and left.” Jonathan Sturgeon in The Baffler on American exceptionalism and “the imperial self” in fiction, with particular attention paid to the work of two other Jonathans, Franzen and Safran Foer.
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Edgar Award Nominations
The Mystery Writers of America has announced the nominees for the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Awards [pdf]. Nominees include Tana French for Faithful Place and Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon for Zora and Me (featuring Zora Neale Hurston, girl detective).