Seeing as yesterday was Donald Barthelme’s birthday, it’s as good a time as any to remember the short fiction icon. At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova reads Barthelme’s essay “Not-Knowing,” which you can find in the author’s collection of essays and interviews. Sample quote: “Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.”
The Art of Not
Divisive Stores
“This year wasn’t short on the best kind of book: the type that polarizes opinion.” The New Republic reviews the most divisive books of the year. Included is our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire. Check out opening lines from the story and an interview with the author.
Football Book Club: ‘Milk and Filth’
This week the Band of Merry Men/Women that is of Football Book Club is reading Carmen Giménez Smith's poetry collection Milk and Filth -- and posting about Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction. Also: Check in later this week for possible guest posts by Ben Carson and Donald Trump. Also: There will be no guest posts by Ben Carson and Donald Trump.
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Pictures of You(th)
The good people over at The Rumpus have added another fantastic essay to their Albums of Our Lives series. This week, it’s Jonathan Kime who gives The Cure’s crushing, overwhelmingly melancholic 1989 album Disintegration the track-by-track treatment. Earlier iterations included Sufjan Stevens and Jason Isbell.
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Happy Birthday, Lord Byron
Happy Birthday to Lord Byron, who was born on this day in 1788. Read some of his poems aloud or check out illustrations of “Don Juan” at Brain Pickings to celebrate his life’s works.
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An Excerpt from the New Knausgaard
Here’s one for all you Knausgaard fans: Newsday has a short excerpt from My Struggle: Book Three. (Related: if you’re not yet a Knausgaard fan, allow Jonathan Callahan to extend an invitation to the club.)