The Paris Review and the 92nd Street Y have long collaborated on a series of onstage conversations with prominent authors. Now, these talks are going to be made available online as part of 92Y’s Poetry Center Online, and also on the Review’s website. Kicking off the first round of videos are talks with Garrison Keillor, Iris Murdoch, and William Styron. Look out in the coming months for more audio with the likes of Maya Angelou, Jamaica Kincaid, and Allen Ginsberg. (Bonus: 92Y has been adding heaps of content to its digital archive all month.)
New Collaboration Between 92Y and The Paris Review
The Soufflé Also Rises
Has a cookbook ever changed your life? Here is Christine Baumgarthuber for The New Inquiry on early cookbooks and the lifestyle revolution that they sparked. Further your culinary exploits with Stephanie Bernhard’s essay for The Millions on cooking with Ernest Hemingway.
The Pathos of Reno
“My friend Kathy was a Mustang Ranch girl in the eighties, had a line on how to bring cocaine into town, and was party girl central and making a lot of money. She was in the center of it in a way that my characters can see but they can’t ever get to. Reno is a beautiful, beat up, and weird town devoted to this false notion of luck. It’s a beautiful place.” Talking with Christian Kiefer.
A Murmuration of Starlings
Also the name of a beautiful book of poetry by Jake Adam York, a group of starlings is known as a "murmuration." One could make the case that the birds are America's most literary. Each of the hundreds of millions of European starlings currently inhabiting North America is a descendant of the approximately 100 birds released in New York City's Central Park in the early 1890s. They were released by a society intent on populating America with each of the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays.
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Our Massive, Shared, Ubiquitous Digital Brain
Michael Seidlinger writes on how consciousness occurs online. As he puts it, “We have all become Sisyphus, pushing our rocks up a hill littered with hyperlinks and tweets, perpetually, futilely, refreshing the page of existence.” Pair with this Millions piece on the best of literary Twitter.
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Coetzee on Murray
Millions favorite J. M. Coetzee analyzes "the angry genius" of Les Murray for The New York Review of Books.
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China’s Censorship Army
Not only does China employ some two million censors to monitor microblogs and the internet, but the nation also has a formidable staff – both official and unofficial – to monitor literature and print publications. Indeed, reports Andrew Jacobs for The New York Times, “It is the editors at Chinese publishing houses themselves who often turn out to have the heaviest hands. ‘Self-censorship has become the most effective weapon,’ said the editor in chief of a prominent publishing house in Beijing … ‘If you let something slip through that catches the attention of a higher-up, it can be a career killer.’”
Poet Rocker
Paul Muldoon's band, The Wayside Shrines, is the latest project for Paul Kolderie, the Brooklyn-based producer for Radiohead and Pixies. (via)
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