Though Kim Gordon is mostly known for her time in Sonic Youth, she’s also an artist and writer, one who’s racked up art projects and publications over the course of the past forty years. At Full-Stop, Hestia Peppe reviews Is It My Body?, a new collection of Gordon’s essays and other written work. It might also be a good time to read our own Anne K. Yoder on punk and revolutionary nonfiction.
Post-Lit
Medieval Advice
Need to know how to tell if someone is or is not dead? How to leave a party gracefully? How to avoid the plague? Luckily the writers of the Middle Ages had a how-to book for everything, even if that advice does include killing bed bugs by “Spread[ing] Gun-powder, beaten small, about the crevices of your bedstead” and then lighting it.
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Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
“I couldn’t put the books down. Now that so many of us complain of diminished attention spans— our own as well as our companions’—it’s worth asking what has made millions of readers willing to suspend their disbelief—to suspend their selves—for thousands of pages.” Why have so many people gone gaga for Ferrante and Knausgaard? We have our own theories as well.
“Maybe being mesmerized is the last thing you remember”
“What I didn’t know then was that these decorations evolved from the Jewish menora, the Hebrew festival of lights. I don’t think my mother knew that either, but if she did she never mentioned it. And I certainly never contemplated the resemblance of a sleigh to a cradle. A sleigh is basically a very large cradle.” Mary Ruefle on Christmas trees.
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Galway Kinnell Passes Away
“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.” Galway Kinnell, whose Selected Poems won a Pulitzer in 1983, passed away Tuesday.
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Michael Lewis Goes to the Movies (Again)
Michael Lewis has been tapped by Warner Brothers to adapt his first book Liar’s Poker for the big screen. This will be the third movie based on one of Lewis’ books.
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Best American Notables at The Millions
We’re proud to report that “Beautiful Babies” by our editor Lydia Kiesling and “Summer without End” by Wayne Scott were both named “Notable Essays” in the 2016 edition of The Best American Essays, edited by Jonathan Franzen.