Need to spice up your writing? Try one of McSweeney’s punctuation marks such as the Yellow-Winged Apostrophe, which likes “to ‘peace out’ of its obligation to indicate possession or contraction,” or the Academic Ellipsis, which “is used by those who wish to demonstrate just how much more they know about how to use ellipses than you do.”
Semicolon Shenanigans
Tuesday New Release Day: Johnson; Moshfegh; Berlin; Barker; Al Aswany; Cobb; Lee; Dirda
Out this week: Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson; Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh; A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin; The Incarnations by Susan Barker; The Automobile Club of Egypt by Alaa Al Aswany; Darkness the Color of Snow by Thomas Cobb; The Investigation by J.M. Lee; and Browsings by the Washington Post critic Michael Dirda. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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Vermeer was a Hacker
"The way Vermeer painted this wall is consistent with a photograph. It is not consistent with human vision." In a fascinating new documentary by Penn and Teller, a digital-graphics artist spent five years building a lens, a room, and a harpsichord to figure out how.
Smile More
Recommended (Frustrating) Reading: "Men Explain Submissions To Me," an eye-opening new piece from Sarah Blake at The Rumpus.
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Cultural Moments
“It took me ten years (four of writing, six of rewriting) to complete The Listener. Now ‘trans is trending,’ and the book has been published into this particular cultural moment, one I could never have envisioned twelve years ago.” Rachel Basch discusses writing in the context of social change at Lit Hub. Pair with our own Sonya Chung’s piece on literary activism.
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The Me Bird, Animated
18bis, a design and animation studio located in Rio de Janeiro, has animated Pablo Neruda’s homonym poem, “The Me Bird.” Laughing Squid has more information, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at how the video was made.
Taking Off
"Every streetlight is a slightly different hue/of white the squares like the blank faces of robots/offer the Hondas and Toyotas idling in the lot something/like hope and yet I am thinking of all of the people on the planes/landing and taking off the twin miracles of arrival and departure/each of them singing 'Take Me With You' whether they know/the song or not they are all singing". A poem written by Dean Rader on the day of Prince's death.
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Splendid, Vibrant
Recommended Reading: Tolu Ogunlesi on how “Nigeria’s literary scene has burgeoned into this splendid, vibrant space.”
French Fiction
Recommended recommendations: Nancy Kline surveys recently translated French novels for the New York Times Book Review. Pair with our own Bill Morris's piece in the Daily Beast on the 2014 Nobel Prize Winner Patrick Modiano and "Why American's Don't Read Foreign Fiction."