Recommended Reading: Got a ton of spare time and a nostalgic interest in killer, mechanized war machines? Cool. Me too. Here’s an oral history of Battlebots.
“I decided to stage an event: Robot Wars.”
James Alan McPherson Passes Away
Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Alan McPherson has passed away at 72. His anthology Elbow Room won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1978. He was one of the first individuals to receive a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation. He graduated from Harvard Law school, but instead decided to pursue writing and later earned an MFA from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he was a professor emeritus.
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Counterproductive Categorization
It’s a question that puzzles writers of all stripes: why is so much academic writing so terrible? It’s an issue that’s been a lifelong head-scratcher for the linguist Steven Pinker, who set out to answer the question once and for all. His verdict? It has to do with the meaning of “literary style.”
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“Twenty feet above sea level”
In his recent collection of poetry, The Americans, David Roderick examines the spaces in which Americans make their homes, calling on his readers to view them in the context of American history. At The Rumpus, Brian Simoneau reviews the collection, which he says illuminates some of his own odd feelings about moving from Boston to Connecticut.
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Haruki Murakami on Memory Versus Reality
Memory is at the forefront as Haruki Murakami discusses his new story, "With the Beatles," with Deborah Treisman.
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