Haven’t read our own Mark O’Connell’s great new essay at Slate? To mark the hundredth anniversary of Dubliners, Mark paid a visit to the James Joyce House, which led him to reflect on life in his native city. “If you live in Dublin, if you are yourself a Dubliner,” he writes, “no matter how many times you read the book, it will always reveal something profound and essential and unrealized about the city and its people.”
Dear and Dirty
Sarah Palin, White Goddess
N+1's Marco Roth turns in an ambitious and historically nuanced exploration of white grievance in a putatively postracial America. Highly recommended.
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On the Scroll
"Was Jack Kerouac really a hack?" To quote Truman Capote: "That's not writing, it's typing." Though not all writers agree.
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The James Salter Diet
James Salter’s women are “described over and over again as meals for the male protagonists to enjoy and then leave behind in various western European countries,” Lidia Jean Kott argues. Read Sonya Chung’s take in our review of All That Is.
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The Rude Writer
In the September issue of Elle, Lorrie Moore talks about why being a writer means being creepily detached and rude. Redux here at Jezebel.
And You Thought Literary Magazines Had It Rough
Trouble might lie ahead for Skymall. Rohin Dhar makes the case in The Atlantic that everybody’s favorite in-flight magazine might’ve just merged with a dubious “nutraceuticals” company in need of SEC scrutiny.
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