“We go to casinos to tell the everyday world that we will not submit.” NPR has an excerpt from Colson Whitehead’s new book, The Noble Hustle.
Colson at the Casino
The Freedom of Limits
“Limits stop you from living a life without limits,” writes Augusten Burroughs. “Of course, this is only an illusion. What limits really do is give you an acceptable excuse to avoid doing something.” (He’s talking about life, not Oulipo.) The piece is excerpted from his recent book, This Is How.
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Righteous Anger
You’ve probably heard the sad news that Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman passed away on May 2nd. In memory of Hanneman's work with the band, Greg Pollock wrote a paean to God Hates Us All, “the most important album in [his] life.”
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Trouble Afoot in America’s Universities
Last April, our own Bill Morris bemoaned the current state of America's higher education system. At the same time, Malcolm Harris derided the unreasonable cost of that same system. Now Benjamin Ginsberg, author of The Fall of the Faculty, places blame for both criticisms on the shoulders of universities' expanding administrative staff.
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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.)
The Bad Sex Award
What's it like to win the Literary Review's Bad Sex award? As 2010 "winner" Rowan Somerville reports, "It's a hard pill to swallow ... Despite the magazine's assertion that 'it's only a bit of fun' there's an atmosphere of bullying peculiar to public schools about the whole thing."
The Master
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iWalser, iBradbury
David Wright recommends five works perfectly suitable for smartphone reading.
High Book Marks
Lit Hub has created a Rotten Tomatoes for the literary world. Once a book receives three reviews, it is assigned a score on their new site, Book Marks. Alex Shephard asks if we might have a grade inflation problem.
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