You might have heard that “twerk” (among other words) has been added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online. But you probably didn’t hear Morgan Freeman reading the definition aloud.
Twerking with Morgan Freeman
Faulkner and the Black Arts Movement
Frank Kovarik explores the controversy over whether Faulkner was racist and why Faulkner was singled out for these charges.
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What About Your Head?
“None of us made love, we had only reproaches for one another. I hated that dependency and yet I couldn’t live without it.” This short piece by Mercè Rodoreda from the new issue of Harper’s Magazine is brutal and surprising. The piece is an excerpt from Rodoreda’s War, So Much War, out later this month.
A Giant Otter
Depending on your perspective, this is either the best or the worst pairing of speaker to content there is: Benedict Cumberbatch reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis for the BBC. As always with Cumberbatch, the reading is a nice complement to our own Elizabeth Minkel on Sherlock.
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Adonis Adapts Ancient Zuhayr Poem
Adonis, the great Syrian poet, has reproduced and adapted one of the ancient Muallaqat (The Suspended Odes) originally written by Zuhayr. The reproduction is hand-written on a scroll of paper, and then painted on, thereby “creating a new and contemporary interpretation of the text.”
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Going Bananas Over a Piece of Cake
Ever wonder where the phrase “worth his salt” came from? How about “spill the beans”? At The Smithsonian Magazine, Lisa Bramen traces the origins of food-related idioms. (via.)
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Statements of the Union
The President gave his final State of the Union address on Tuesday night. McSweeney’s shares with us some talking points that have been cut from SOTU addresses over the years.