Recommended viewing: Tobias Wolff tried to convince Stephen Colbert that The Catcher in the Rye is J.D. Salinger’s best book. “Do we need to be reinforcing our kids’ bad behavior as teenagers with the idea they could be a character in a great novel? Dad, I wasn’t disobeying you, I was exploring modes of alienation,” Colbert joked.
Colbert in the Rye
Triple Threat
It’s either ironic or perfectly apropos that on the day the royal baby was born, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie teamed up for a rare joint reading.
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The Pursuit of Happiness
“It came to me while picking beans, the secret of happiness.” Maria Popova from Brain Pickings on gardening and what it means to be happy. Writers used to be so mopey and alcoholic all the time–it’s nice that they can just be happy now.
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The Oracle
John Warner is today reprising his popular book-recommending engine (i.e. his brain), that he unveiled to great effect during the Tournament of Books earlier this year.
A Bad Poetry Manifesto
“I began to wonder: what would a manifesto for bad poetry look like? Would it differ either superficially or deeply from the art’s graver manifestos? It really wouldn’t have to. It would merely have to persuade, and persuasion sounds very much the same whether it is honest or dishonest. If it was any good it would hold great attractiveness as a snappy piece of writing, but, if followed, it would be certain to produce bad poetry. Some harmless sophistry. In this it would be more effective than any positive manifesto, because, if guided well, no-one who sets out to write a bad poem is going to accidentally write an excellent one.” Erik Kennedy lays out a manifesto for bad poetry, titled “Precepts for Perfection in Poetry,” for The Rumpus. For a counterpoint, pair with our own Nick Ripatrazone‘s look at very good and very sad poetry, “The Saddest Poem Ever Written.”
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New André 3000 on the way
The possibility of a new André 3000 solo album (even if it’s “no sure thing”) is liable to make this writer giddy. Fun Fact: In a print-only interview with Oxford American, National Book Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward nominated Three Stacks as “the most underrated Southern writer.” (And she’s a fan of his collaborations with Frank Ocean, too.) You shouldn’t have needed an endorsement, but if you did, then that should be good enough for you.
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Slouching Towards Summer
From “A Prayer For Maintaining At Least A Tenuous Hold On My Sanity” to “A Prayer for My Wrecked Bladder,” here are five prayers whispered by a first-year teacher as the school year slouches to a finish.
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Not All Dads Are Good Dads
Andrew Thurman writes about a literary genre he's particularly invested in: the Bad Dad Memoir, typically written by the offspring of said Bad Dads.
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