Piggybacking off a brief aside in Ian Frazier’s new review of James Agee’s Cotton Tenants, Claire Kelley explores an odd and intriguing question: was Agee related to Walt Whitman? (Related: Mallory Ortberg on the probability that Whitman did the dirty with Oscar Wilde.)
Family Matters
Recommended Reading: “Seven Days After Father”
Essay Liu‘s essay “Seven Days After Father” has been translated by Kevin T. S. Tang for Blunderbuss Magazine and presents a daughter’s sincere grief confused by custom. “‘The funeral director forbids tears as we approach your coffin, but demands that we weep on our return. This is the movie script we’ve been handed, one we’ll be beholden to for days, and I know that many things are not mine to decide anymore. Even our tears have been planned for us.”
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The Hand that Feeds Them
Stephen Elliot explains why publishers are shooting themselves in the foot when they gouge authors trying to buy copies of their own books.
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Feel the Tingle?
Recommended Reading: On Chuck Tingle, self-published writer of gay erotica, who beat the notorious Sad Puppies at their own game: “Question: If you could pick a single writer to make an effective, compassionate statement about identity politics to a divided literary community, who would you pick? Would it be a schizophrenic, autistic person who’d authored an e-book called Space Raptor Butt Invasion?”
An Archive of Artist Deaths at the Met
Arturo B. de St. M. D’Hervilly's macabre archive reports the deaths of painters, sculptors, and photographers of the early 20th century.
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Where the Letters Go
A startling conclusion from this data visualization of where in words each letter of the alphabet tends to fall: “the most common word may be ‘the, but the most representative word is ‘toe.’ ” (Also available: detailed methodology and algorithms for the data geeks; an explanation of data-viz as a narrative form for everyone else.)