“The cause of death/was living/the immediate cause/of death was/living in Moscow.” At n +1’s website, Ainsley Morse and Bela Shayevich excerpt their translations of the Soviet poet Vsevolod Nekrasov.
Opiates
Facebook’s Hype
The Facebook IPO was this week’s biggest story. The social media giant, which boasts 800 million members, is seeking a $75-$100 billion market valuation. But hold your horses, investors. A lot of that optimism could be empty hype. After all, look at the site’s requested valuation as a percentage of its 2011 revenue, and compare it to other tech giants like Google and Microsoft. Also, contrary to Mark Zuckerberg’s claim, most of the world does not, in fact, “have access to the internet or mobile phones.”
Tuesday New Release Day: Marcus, Gass, O’Nan, Cole
New this week are The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus, a collection of William H. Gass’s writings, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts, and Stewart O’Nan’s The Odds: A Love Story. New in paperback is Teju Cole’s Open City.
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Thank You, Scratch That
If you’ve ever been asked to write a thank-you note, you know that, paradoxically, it can be one of the hardest forms of writing to do well. In light of that, The Morning News has kindly republished their classic guide to writing thank-you notes, written by Leslie Harpold. Sample quote: “If you want to know when you get a genuine pass on writing a note, the litmus test is simple: Do I live under the same roof as the giver?”
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Diving Into the Wreck
It’s time for a game of critic versus critic: at the Nation and the Huffington Post, respectively, Ange Mlinko and Carol Muske-Dukes consider and reconsider the poetry of Adrienne Rich.
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Coming Out of the Woodwork
“Suddenly, it seems like gay characters are everywhere in Y.A. literature. Or, if not everywhere, certainly in far more places and in a greater variety than ever before.”
Mad Men Make Love
With the season five premiere of Mad Men fast approaching, now’s as good a time as any to catch up on the intimate commingling of its main characters. Fortunately, the folks at Wired have organized the whole thing into a neat “Illustrated Guide to Mad Men Bed-Hopping.”
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