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.”
“Poems Are Unimportant”
“Poems are unimportant,” said Boris Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago, though Kate Angus and our own Nick Ripatrazone certainly disagree.
The Other Down Under
This week saw the release of The Jaguar’s Children, a novel set on the Mexican border that draws on author John Vaillant’s experience in his wife’s home state of Arizona. At The Walrus, Sasha Chapman provides more background on Vaillant in her review of the book, which notes the importance of jaguars in Mexican symbology.
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Longshot Magazine
Longshot is an online magazine with quite an interesting concept: “Over a 48 hour period from noon July 29, 2011, through noon July 31, 2011, thousands of writers, editors, artists, photographers, programmers, videographers, and other creatives from all around the world will come together via the Internet to make a magazine from start to finish.” This issue’s theme is “Debt” and you can follow its progress via Tumblr.
Allison Parrish’s Generated Novel
Two years ago, Allison Parrish produced a diary of an expedition through “fantastical places that do not exist.” The twist? The diary was generated by a computer program, which extracted more than 5,700 sentences drawn from Project Gutenberg and later recombined at random by “switching out grammatical constituents.” An extract of the finished work, interspersed with Parrish’s nonfiction essay, can be read here.
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Jane Eyre: En Pointe
Choreographer Cathy Marston explains the challenges behind translating Jane Eyre for the stage in the American Ballet Theatre's new production.
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Emily Gould’s Mysterious Book Project
Emily Gould, former Gawker editor, author of And the Heart Says Whatever, proprietor of the literary cooking show Cooking the Books, appears poised to launch a new literary venture, Emily Books. So says The Observer.
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Get Outta Town, Pat Buchanan
“White Americans do not realize how black they are,” writes Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish. If, upon reading Sullivan, you find yourself questioning your racial identity, try the blog Stuff White People Like–sure, most of it is really stuff that dinks and yuppies like (class trumps race, as Walter Ben Michaels explains at the LRB), but it might help you brush up on the ways and loves of white folks: camping, pea coats, hating your parents, Wes Anderson, diversity, sushi, standing still at concerts…
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