If you don’t have a New Yorker subscription and can’t read Dana Goodyear’s wonderful profile of Lydia Davis, then you can at the very least check out the Can’t and Won’t author’s interview with Quarterly Conversation. Or, of course, you could just go straight to the source and mainline some of her short fiction directly.
The Week of Lydia Davis
Howard?
“Writing on a computer can be terribly distracting, so sometimes I like to use a pencil and paper to jot down ideas. I always end up drawing a cartoon duck. Inevitably, the duck is holding a notepad, and I can read the ideas that he wrote down.” At Clickhole, six writers explain how they overcome writer’s block.
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Mr. Gay Syria
“We wanted to show a side of the migration crisis that is rarely portrayed, steering away from the depictions of nameless masses by certain media and politicians,” write the producers of Mr. Gay Syria, a documentary about Syrian refugees and their quest to shine a spotlight on the community of “Syrians who had to run away from war and homophobia,” and who have relocated to Turkey, “a place that did not accept them either.” Now, after two years of work, the filmmakers are raising money to fund post-production and community outreach. You can donate here, and visit their Facebook or Twitter pages for more information.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Morrison; Schultz; Roe; Wellington; Cohen; Parrett; Miller; Gibbon
New this week: God Help the Child by Toni Morrison; The Blondes by Emily Schultz; The Miracle Girl by Andrew Roe; Positive by David Wellington; This Is How It Really Sounds by Stuart Archer Cohen; When the Night Comes by Favel Parrett; Seven Devils by M.G. Miller; and Paris Red by Maureen Gibbon. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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Free Access to the Oxford African American Studies Center
In observance of Black History Month, the Oxford African American Studies Center is granting free online access to its archives. Simply enter the login name “blackhistorymonth” and use the password, “onlineaccess.”
Competence without comprehension
If you read one piece on early computer scientist Alan Turing that's come out in celebration of his 100th birthday last Saturday (if you were wondering about Friday's Google Doodle) you might do very well to make it this one in the Atlantic on how his reading of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution influenced his work and continues to shape the way we work with computers. It's also about the limits of artificial intelligence.
New Philip Pullman!
His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman has reportedly completed another trilogy, The Book of Dust, that will publish in October of this year. The new works "will stand alongside his bestselling series," sources say.
Love and Memory
Recommended Reading: This fantastic essay by Lea Page at The Rumpus on memory, family, and a whole lot more than that: "There could be no argument, no defense. It was, in a literal sense, true. I had said that.Sure, she had left out a significant portion of the truth, but in doing so, she had revealed another. That was the one memory my mother cleaved to. That was the song she chose to sing of me. I was still losing at memory."
Top Longreads of 2011
They say you're only as good as the company you keep. If that's the case, we're thrilled to have published Jim Santel's piece on The Moviegoer, which has made The Awl staff's list of "Top Longreads of 2011".
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