In addition to its overt references to Robert Chambers’s The King in Yellow, HBO’s breakout hit, True Detective, seems also to draw from the work of a self-published poet named Dennis McHale. Or is it the other way around? (Bonus: Lincoln Michel drew up a reading list of southern gothic books similar in tone to the HBO series.)
True Detective: “where time is a flat circle”
Secret Space
Recommended Reading: Over at Aeon, Tiffany Jenkins writes about the importance of secrets for a child’s development and in children’s literature.
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From the Frozen North
Recommended Reading: “Out in the Great Alone,” Brian Phillips’s epic report from the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
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Not Very Titillating
Those of you who know the joy of reading romance novels with your friends have probably wondered at some point what people who write erotica are like. Are they bankers and professionals? Housewives and mistresses? Are they some combination of all of the above? At Slate, a chaste look at the lives of unchaste writers.
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Foxcatcher
You’ve probably taken one of those quizzes that lets you find out the nature of your spirit animal. If so, you’ll enjoy this novel take on the form, which lets you see which animal from a famous poem you are. (For the record, this writer got Marianne Moore’s immortal fish.)
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A Quality of Immortality
“When watching [Abbas] Kiarostami films, one also has a great sense of another kind of freedom not found in Hollywood movies, nor in most European art films: freedom from the creeping realization that a film we are watching was made by a cynical shit or a self-deluded megalomaniac.” Here’s something you don’t see every day — an essay that begins with an Independence Day showing of The Purge: Election Year, and somehow ends up at a poetic examination of Kiarostami’s artistic legacy.
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The Summer Rooster Crows Soon
We are longtime fans (and participants) of The Morning News‘s Tournament of Books, and so were thrilled to learn they’re starting up a summer book club with a ToB twist. Join them in reading Katie Kitamura‘s A Separation and The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge, starting in just a week and a half.
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Intellectual Politics: A Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books managing editor Evan Kindley reviews Michael Szalay’s Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party, and says it “reminds us of a time, not long ago, when literary intellectuals set great store by mainstream political parties, and vice versa.”
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Limning in 140 Characters
A satirical Michiko Kakutani Twitter presence has emerged, and the (allegedly) real critic has some guesses as to the doppelgänger’s identity. EDIT: Lindsay Goldwert’s helpfully rounded up the gossip.
True Detective is riddled with poetic portent. The Yellow King so lends himself to stanza. http://www.scribd.com/doc/208705970/True-Detective