The New York Times unearthed footage from a 1996 interview with Robert Gardner and Peter Matthiessen. The pair discuss a trip they took to New Guinea in the 60s, which “resulted in Gardner’s film Dead Birds and Matthiessen’s book Under the Mountain Wall.”
Robert Gardner and Peter Matthiessen in Conversation
Thick Skin
Year in Reading alum Catie Disabato sits down with 0s&1s to discuss “using criticism as fuel, ambition, comparisons to Ayn Rand, the power of pop stars, happiness norms & more.” You could also read our review of her latest work, The Ghost Network.
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The War on Baby Girls
We’re headed toward a future with a “biologically unnatural excess of males,” writes Nicholas Eberstadt. Indeed, “It’s a girl” can be recognized among “the three deadliest words in the world.”
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Curiosities
Olsson’s, a small chain that was an old standby among Washington D.C. independent bookstores, is likely to file for bankruptcy. It was the stores’ ample music sections and gentrification that contributed most to its downfall. “‘The book business is getting a little soft. It’s not selling as much as it used to,’ Olsson said. ‘Our music sales went from 50 percent of our business to maybe 15. We lost a lot of revenue, and at the same time rents went up and real estate taxes went up. I don’t know what we would have done differently. It’s a killer.'”The linguistic capabilities of modern world leaders. Well done, Pope, well done.For those whose fantasies involve real estate: Private Islands for SaleAnd a pair of audio items:Nam Le’s The Boat is getting rave reviews. Here he visits The Leonard Lopate Show.Garth covered the PEN World Voices Tribute to Robert Walser. Interested readers can now listen to the entire event.
Sedaris by the Sea
Recommended Reading: David Sedaris’s essay about his sister Tiffany’s suicide, “Now We Are Five,” for The New Yorker. “How could anyone purposefully leave us, us, of all people? This is how I thought of it, for though I’ve often lost faith in myself, I’ve never lost it in my family, in my certainty that we are fundamentally better than everyone else.”
James Frey’s Fiction Factory
From New York Magazine, a harrowing piece on “Full Fathom Five,” the young adult fiction factory spearheaded by James Frey, and the controversial contracts young writers are asked to sign.
A Story of Decline
Last month, in a review for The Millions, Chris Barsanti called George Packer’s The Unwinding an “awe-inspiring X-Ray of the modern American soul.” Now, in The Guardian, Sukhdev Sandhu calls the book “decent, meticulous and concerned,” though it could have benefited from the “roiling prose-fire of Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi.”
A Young Writer
Recommended reading: Joseph Scapellato summarizes the life of a young writer for Electric Lit. “You are a young writer. Write.”
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