The Bygone Bureau asked a whole heap of people to write for their annual “Best of the Internet” post, and I was one of them. Come on over to see what I have to say about Ted Berrigan, a Twitter robot, and a certain type of found poetry.
The Best of the Internet
Looking at Selma
"A film based on a historical subject, even a beautifully shot one, can remind us without meaning to that although reading in the US is a minority activity, the book is still the only medium in which you can make a complicated argument." Darryl Pinckney writes about "Some Different Ways of Looking at Selma" for the New York Review of Books. Pair with our own Bill Morris's Millions review of the film.
The Book Club to End All Book Clubs
A long discussion of Tenth of December that includes George Saunders himself? Why, Rumpus Book Club, you're too kind.
●
●
Curiosities
Anne Fernald's two posts about her grandmother's editions of Virginia Woolf are a treat.Gwenda Bond of Shaken and Stirred landed on NPR over the weekend to talk about the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables, in honor of which the Modern Library has put out a new edition.The Oxford Project: "In 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein set out to photograph every single resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa." It's a neat sounding photo book, reminiscent of La Porte, Indiana.Under 30? Really good at writing book reviews? You should enter VQR's Young Reviewers Contest.It's an alarm clock that wakes you up with the voice of Stephen Fry in the character of Jeeves. You can listen to all the recordings at the site. An example: "Let us seize the day and take it roughly from behind... as the Colonel used to say in his unfortunate way."
●
●
Gottlieb’s Letter
“A very proper letter (‘scrutinized and corrected by the magazine's fact checkers and proofreaders,’ wrote the Times) was sent to [Robert] Gottlieb, beseeching him to decline the [New Yorker] job,” writes Elon Green in his overview of Gottlieb’s brief stint as the magazine’s editor. How would you feel if Donald Barthelme, Deborah Eisenberg, Ian Frazier, Jamaica Kincaid, Janet Malcolm, J.D. Salinger, and 148 others all told you, “don’t come” to your new job?
●
●
Drunk Texts From Famous Authors (Part II)
A year and a half later, Jessie Gaynor returns to The Paris Review to follow up her much-appreciated “Drunk Texts From Famous Authors” series. (Part one is here.) On tap this time: T.S. Eliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Beckett, Roald Dahl, Jorge Luis Borges, Guillaume Apollinaire, William Blake, and a Flarf poet.
●
●