H. Jon Benjamin (of Bob’s Burgers notoriety) loaned his voice-over talents to Vulture and McSweeney’s for this 8-bit adaptation of Mike Lacher’s classic piece, “In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed As a Conquering Hero.”
“Then did he see, at long last, that The Google did load.”
World of Redundant Forms
Recommended Reading: Over at Electric Literature, Lori Huth writes about Jeanette Winterson and contemporary war metaphor: “I wanted to feel powerful emotions commensurate with the horror of the story behind the images. I wanted to feel bewildered, and to lament, but instead I felt numb.”
Contemplating a Cross-Country Drive? Grab the Proust Audiobook
Do you have 153 hours to kill? Do you love long French masterworks? If so, the folks at Naxos AudioBooks might have something up your alley. At 120-discs, publisher Nicolas Soames believes his company’s unabridged audiobook for Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past might just be the longest audiobook in existence. (Note: that means you’d still have 23 hours of the audiobook left after making this drive around the country.)
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The Help: Feel-Good or Offensive?
Though it had a promising box office debut, The Help is ruffling some feathers for its portrayal of African American women. Roxane Gay sums things up nicely for The Rumpus.
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Thoughts of a Hand-Wringer
If you were to guess (no cheating) the author of a new essay on hypochondria, who would you guess? Larry David? Calvin Trillin? Or someone a little more… nebbishy?
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“It was not intended to drive people crazy”
In a piece originally published in a 1913 edition of The Forerunner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman explains why she felt inspired to write “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
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RIP Elizabeth Jane Howard
British novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard has died at the age of 90. She was famous for The Cazalet Chronicles and her literary love affairs with Kingsley Amis (one of her three husbands), Cecil Day-Lewis, and Arthur Koestler. Despite that her writing career spanned 60 years, she admitted that she found writing frightening in a recent interview. “You’ve got to be pretty nervous about the challenge, the blank page – anything could be on it, it could be crap or it could be wonderful.”
Harper Lee Sues Museum
The Guardian reports that Harper Lee is suing the local museum in her Alabama hometown. The octogenarian author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who currently resides in an assisted-living facility, claims that the museum is profiting off her fame without providing her due compensation.
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