Recommended Reading: Larissa Pham on Milena Michiko Flašar’s I Called Him Necktie.
On Hikikomoris, Etc.
Pilgrim at Tinker.com
A brand new lit mag out of Canada, Numero Cinq, goes by the tagline “a warm place on a cruel web.” As if to drive home the point, the editors published a nifty study of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
“Stare at us stoned like eyes determined”
Rage Against the Machine frontman Zach De La Rocha has penned a poem dedicated to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Translating Anna Karenina
"How earnest, ironic, condescending, moralistic and simply funny a Tolstoy should the translator inhabit? Perhaps the only way to render Tolstoy’s variable voice is to continue producing ever-varying translations." Masha Gessen looks at the latest English translations of Anna Karenina and breaks down their nuances of word choice and accumulated meaning for The New York Times Book Review, and along the way she questions the novel's most famous line: just how alike are happy families? How can we know?
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A great hater of bad books.
The true confessions of Lev Grossman, book reviewer: "There was a time when I actually believed, because I was an ass, that as a critic I was an avenging angel with a flaming sword, and that part of my job was to help rid the culture of books that were sucking up more of the literary oxygen than they deserved."
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Four Easy Steps
1. Research a social issue. 2. Start a blog. 3. ??? 4. Become a public intellectual! Or not.
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