“Telegraphic art”
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The Housewife Novel
Recommended Reading: On the history of literature about housewives, from Madame Bovary to Dept. of Speculation.
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Zooey Deschanel on New Girl
Every Wednesday, Vanity Fair bloggers dissect Zooey Deschanel’s performance on New Girl and quantify each quirk as “adorkable” or “tweepulsive.”
One With Others
“She was to me and so many poets an exemplary and inimitable figure. And I mean to emphasize the tension between ‘exemplary’ and ‘inimitable’—what her example taught us was the necessity of going our own way, of being one with others.” Ben Lerner remembers C.D. Wright, who passed away earlier this week.
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Two Tumblrs Worth Seeing
Consider these two Tumblrs as late additions to my three-part (one, two, three) taxonomy of literary blogs. Writers at Work is three years in the making, so we’re a bit late to the party, but Erasing Infinite, which creates erasure poems out of each page of Infinite Jest, looks like it’s got a long way to go before it’s finished.
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Clearness, Wetness, Coolness
Anne Carson has a new story in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, about swimming and its discontents. As she puts it, “People think swimming is carefree and effortless. A bath! In fact, it is full of anxieties.” Pair with her first published short story in the January issue of Harper’s.
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No You’re Crying
A lost letter from a dying mother to her young daughter was found in a used bookstore in Bishop Auckland, England, and has been returned to its rightful owner after 15 years. Related: on donating books to unexpected readers.
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