On Wednesday, the BBC Radio 4 program Four Thought broadcasted an essay by our own Mark O’Connell that lays out a novel argument: we should embrace the value of ambivalence. (We’re not sure how to feel about that.)
He’s on the Fence
America’s First Bohemians
Recommended reading: Brandon Ambrosino interviews Justin Martin, author of Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians, about, well, Walt Whitman and America’s first bohemians.
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Catlin Seaview Survey
One of my favorite Google Easter Eggs was the (now removed) instruction to “swim across the Atlantic Ocean” in order to get from New York to London. Today, however, that joke seems prophetic. Google, in conjunction with The University of Queensland and the Catlin Group, has created the Catlin Seaview Survey or, in other words, “an underwater variant of the Google Street View service.”
Looking for America
Recommended Viewing: Photographer Alec Soth and writer Brad Zellar’s LBM Dispatch, “an irregularly published newspaper of the North American ramblings.” The New Yorker has a gallery of 14 of Soth’s haunting photos that capture the fleeting spirit of America.
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Early Dust Jackets!
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Appearing Elsewhere
Prospero, the new arts and culture blog of The Economist, has just posted my piece on literary Brooklyn, which explains how New York’s trendiest borough has become a vertically integrated factory for the production of fiction and poetry.
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