Getting sick of people who overuse the word “literally”? A new browser extension kindly replaces instances of the word with “figuratively.” At Slate, Will Oremus tries out a godsend for pedants. (A Millions piece by Fiona Maazel nicely complements his article.)
Figuratively Unbelievable
Maybe His Advice Isn’t So Great After All
You might think that the co-author of Fiesta: How to Survive the Bulls of Pamplona would be able to partake in the Spanish city’s annual event without suffering any injuries. Unfortunately for Bill Hillmann, that’s not the case.
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Chandler’s Poetry
Before cutting his teeth as novelist and screenwriter, Raymond Chandler tried to make it as a poet. Here are some early poems from the author of The Long Goodbye.
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#Dragons and #TheWall
As if the guy needs any additional distractions to keep him from writing the seventh (or eighth!) books in his Song of Ice and Fire series, George R. R. Martin recently decided to join Twitter. If he ends book six with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, then I presume you’ll know why.
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The Wire as a Victorian Novel
And now for something completely different… The Wire reimagined as a Victorian novel and analyzed in a funny, yet sharp satire piece.
Christopher Beha On Pop Theology
Recommended listening: Christopher Beha, whose latest novel Arts & Entertainments we recently reviewed, talks with On Pop Theology about his new book, Catholicism, What Happened to Sophie Wilder? and The Bachelorette.
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Geoff Dyer on Pagetti’s Syria
The devastating images of Syria shot by Franco Pagetti have been collected into a series entitled Veiled Aleppo. Over at The New Republic, Geoff Dyer writes about one of them. It’s an image, Dyer observes, that features “symbols … of the death throes not of a city but of film.”