Recommended Reading: Tyler Stoddard Smith’s satirical essay on the new literary movement “The Real Newism” at Hobart. “Did Virgil go to hell? No. Did Virginia Woolf go to Disney World? No, and it turns out that Orlando isn’t a place, but a dude. And did Truman Capote ever have breakfast at Tiffany’s? Yes, but the eggs Benedict was cold and the bloody marys were ‘bullshit.'”
The Real World
“It’s why the gift horse is a gift”
Recommended Reading: “The Tiny Men in the Horse’s Mouth” by Matthew Olzmann for New England Review.
F. Scott Fitzgerald on YouTube
F. Scott Fitzgerald reads from Othello (via The Missouri Review), John Keats, and John Masefield.
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Men of the Stacks
A group of male librarians is “attempting to overthrow the cliché of the bespectacled, permanently shushing female library worker” with the publication of a Calendar Girls-style calendar, Men of the Stacks.
Beginnings
Please welcome the newest Millions reader: August Hudson Magee, born Monday morning!
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Digital Heaven
Recommended Reading: This piece on a digital afterlife — duplicating oneself via computer program — which is by turns troubling and oddly reassuring: “The human brain has about a hundred billion neurons. The connectional complexity is staggering. By some estimates, the human brain compares to the entire content of the internet. It’s only a matter of time, however, and not very much at that, before computer scientists can simulate a hundred billion neurons.”
Appearing Elsewhere
I have an essay in the September issue of Poets & Writers on “The Social Value of MFA Programs.” Sadly, P&W deems the piece too valuable to give away for free on the Web, so if you want to read it, you’ll have to go to your local newsstand and buy a copy.
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