Can’t keep track of who is driving which car in The Great Gatsby? Pop Chart Lab made a chart of the comings and goings of the novel’s characters via trains, cars, and feet.
Careless Drivers
Mind Games
“I suspect ‘chess rage’ and ‘road rage’ are neighboring neural impulses.” Tom Russell at Guernica Magazine has written a fascinating essay on a summer spent playing chess in Bryant Park and the unexpected artistic beauty of the game. Here’s a cursorily-related review of The Chess Machine, a book which features an unbeatable chess-playing automaton controlled by a dwarf.
Dyer on ‘Reader’s Block’
A rare Geoff Dyer essay, previously unpublished in the U.S., on the curse of reader’s block, excerpted from the forthcoming Otherwise Known as the Human Condition.
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Keep It in Your Pants and out of the Plot
Terrible sex writing spans the globe according to this year's Bad Sex Award shortlist. It includes: My Education by Susan Choi, The Last Banquet by Jonathan Grimwood, House of Earth by Woody Guthrie, Motherland by William Nicholson, The Victoria System by Eric Reinhardt, The World Was All Before Them by Matthew Reynolds, The City of Devi by Manil Suri, and Secrecy by Rupert Thomson. The winner will be announced on December 3.
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