Landays are traditional two-line folk poems, and they are particularly popular among Afghan women these days. Recently Poetry magazine dedicated an issue to the short verses, and Dowser has a behind-the-scenes look at how the issue was put together. Previously, New York Times Magazine caught up with some members of Mirman Baheerm, a women’s literary society based in Kabul.
“My body belongs to me; / to others its mastery.”
Summer Reads; Southern Reads
For me, the call of Southern literature comes strongest in the dog days of summer, when the days are long and when the sun is burning. This year, it seems that the literary community has taken note: five representatives from the region’s “great independent bookstores” have gotten together to recommend the Southern books they’re craziest about this year.
Listening to David Foster Wallace
One measure of a writer may be the quality of the thinking he elicits in others. Here, in advance of The Pale King, is an uncommonly perceptive BBC radio documentary about David Foster Wallace.
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Dear Mr. Watterson Gets a Trailer
A few months back, I wrote about Dear Mr. Watterson, which at the time was set to premiere at Cleveland’s International Film Festival. Well, fans of Calvin and Hobbes will be happy to learn that the Bill Watterson documentary has just released its first teaser trailer. Look for the flick to hit theaters this November.
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Oscar Wilde: An Infographic
The Guardian broke down Oscar Wilde’s most enduring and quotable aphorisms, and presented the entire thing as an infographic. For serious fans of the Irish wit, perhaps the effect of this chart may lead to an “infogasm.”
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Septuagenarian Akutagawa Prize Winner
Paging Sonya Chung and the rest of the Bloom gang: one of this year’s Akutagawa Prize winners is a seventy-five year old woman named Natsuko Kuroda. How’s that for a Post-40 Bloomer? (h/t Dustin Kurtz)
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Questioning Your Legacy
John Steinbeck’s son criticizes the state of Texas for invoking Of Mice and Men‘s Lennie Small, in ruling that certain mentally retarded individuals can be sentenced to the death penalty. The great-great-great granddaughter of Herman Melville wonders where her great-great-great-grandfather’s editor was when he wrote Moby Dick.
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