In October 2011, Hannah Gersen convincingly argued that the Occupy Wall Street protests bore more than a few similarities to Bartleby, The Scrivener. Now, amid the political demonstrations going on throughout Turkey, Millions contributor Kaya Genç draws a similar parallel between Istanbul’s “Standing Man” and Herman Melville’s famous protagonist.
Protest? I Would Prefer Not To.
End Notes from the Master
University students: I double dog dare you to use this David Foster Wallace end note generator to pad out your next term paper’s citations.
The Annotated Frank Sinatra
We didn’t think it was possible to make Gay Talese’s famous Esquire profile “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” any better, but Talese recently annotated the article for Nieman Story Board.
Spying with Mountain Chicken Mother of the Buddha
Recommended Reading: Anya Groner’s short story “Suspecting the Smiths” at The Oxford American. “From the ages of nine to eleven, I worked as a spy… I discussed my cases with my partner, who went by code name Mountain Chicken Mother of the Buddha.”
Why so Serious?
Jonathan Lethem thinks his work is taken too seriously. “Well, I was just watching Richard Pryor, and he says, ‘When you’re dating a white woman, and people don’t like it, you can’t really pretend. You can’t go, “Oh, she’s not with me.”‘ ‘You write the big, ambitious books, right?’ Well, I guess they are,” he said in an interview with Salon. He also discusses being equated with Jonathan Franzen and his new novel, Dissident Gardens.
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Am I Special?
“Perhaps I will just go underground and live a quiet life of desperation. I’ve heard mumblings about a place called ‘Social Media Manager.’ It seems like a nice place where all people my age go for a while. Just until things start to make sense again.” Nobody knows the throes of existential angst quite like a twenty-something. Here’s a plea for help from one such twenty-something over at McSweeney’s.
Kuala Lumpur Timelapse
It’s been a while since I’ve linked to a really gorgeous timelapse video, so here’s Rob Whitworth’s wonderful look at Kuala Lumpur.
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Kirkus Prize Winners Announced
Kirkus Reviews has announced the winners of this year’s Kirkus Prize, bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. The 2015 winners are Hanya Yanagihara (for her A Little Life, who we interviewed), Ta-Nehisi Coates (for Between the World and Me, which we published an essay about), and Pam Muñoz Ryan (for Echo).
Hi Nick. Not last October but October of 2011 when OWS was launched.
Sheesh, time flies. I’ve updated the post — thanks for the catch.