“How is the life of a creative person—an artist, a designer, a composer—related to his or her work?” The New Yorker lists 7 archived pieces by way of answer.
Creative Person, Creative Life
“Geoff Dyer saw Stalker thirty years ago and hasn’t stopped returning to it.”
Millions contributor Jacob Mikanowski takes a gander at Geoff Dyer’s Zona, and he invoked both Wittgenstein and Bolaño by the third paragraph of his write-up, so you know things are about to get heady.
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This is the way the film ends
Blasphemy Alert: They’re giving the film version of August: Osage County a “less downbeat” ending. Curse you, Harvey Weinstein! Is nothing sacred? Can a woman not lament the disintegration of her life, family, and mental stability while the final lines to T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” are read by her housekeeper? Has America gone soft?
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Dreaming with N.K. Jemisin
N.K. Jemisin speaks to Raffi Khatchadourian about writing herself into the stories she wanted to read, as well as what the future holds for her.
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On the Stupidity of Entitlement
Year in Reading alumna Ottessa Moshfegh has a new story in this week’s issue of the New Yorker, titled “The Beach Boy.” Moshfegh also spoke with Deborah Treisman about her writing: “Isn’t it hilarious when people are blind to their own arrogance? For some, no amount of American liberal-arts education, charitable contributions, or hours spent listening to NPR will ever wake them up to their own privileged, bigoted, and classist attitudes. […] One might say that New Yorkers like the folks in ‘The Beach Boy’ are especially susceptible to the kind of stupidity I love to write about—the stupidity of entitlement.”
Science Genius
The Science Genius Initiative is a pilot project organized by Rap Genius, science teachers from ten New York City public schools, and GZA. Together, the group hopes “to change the way city teachers relate to minority students, drawing not just on hip-hop’s rhymes, but also on its social practices and values.” Indeed, as the Wu-Tang Clan emcee – who’s been working with Neil DeGrasse Tyson and MIT physicists for his new album – believes science is worth studying because it “unlocks the key to the universe, and the mysteries we don’t know.”