“Today I ate my shame, regurgitated it as a self-disgust, and digested it again as indolence. Known in the physical world as udon noodles with shrimp tempura,” Teddy Wayne told VICE. He and other writers (including our own Emily St. John Mandel) were profiled on what they eat for lunch. On the side: famous writers’ favorite snacks (Lord Byron liked to drink vinegar.)
Lunch Break
“Working on some short stories but … not that into it”
HTML Giant contributor Jimmy Chen has written a masterful and hysterical piece for McSweeney’s entitled “Raymond Carver’s OKCupid Profile, Edited by Gordon Lish.”
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Making a Documentary
Recommended Reading: This essay from The Rumpus on Netflix’s Making a Murderer and “bad families.”
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Franzen the Fanboy
Every week, we read another article about what Jonathan Franzen hates, but in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Franzen discussed his favorite books. He’s a fan of Harriet the Spy, Gone with the Wind, Childhood’s End, and The Trial.
Wild Possibilities
“Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away. And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn’t enough reason to hope. But there are good reasons.” Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things To Me, on maintaining hope and resisting defeatism.
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Post-Maidan
Recommended Reading: Marci Shore on reading Tony Judt’s Postwar in modern Ukraine.
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James Baldwin on Film
James Baldwin was more famous for being an essayist and novelist, but he was also a film critic. At The Atlantic, Noah Berlatsky argues that Baldwin should be considered one of the best film critics for The Devil Finds Work. “Baldwin shows that criticism is art, which means that it doesn’t need a purpose or a rationale other than truth, or beauty, or keeping faith, or doing whatever it is we think art is trying to do.” For more on Baldwin, read our essay on his epiphanies.
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