This week in book-related internet graphics: “A Map of the Best Book for Every State,” complete with the promise that “every last one will let you understand a time and place in a more profound way than you maybe thought possible.”
The Best Book for Every State
What Does The Shining Mean?
Mark Jacobson wades through the history and fan theories concerning Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining in an effort to uncover the film’s true meaning. For what it’s worth, this explanation of the flick has always hurt my head the most.
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Why Words Matter
"The hijacking of public language, as is happening now, is a way to shift perception—to bend and control thought—and must be resisted." Summer Brennan pens a powerful first entry for her twice-monthly column about language and power at The Literary Hub. Read also our own Lydia Kiesling, who tells us, "I have to believe that literature can be a weapon of a sort — it explodes comfort even while it delivers comfort; it reveals hypocrisy in a way that the mere presentation of facts often cannot."
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“MFA Thesis (and/or Life Reevaluation)”
Did your MFA program offer impractical courses like "Problems in Modern Fiction"? At the Ploughshares blog, Rebecca Makkai offers some suggestions for more useful classes, such as "Introduction to Despair," "Pretending You’re Talking to Terry Gross When You’re Alone in the Car," and "The Art of the Flirty Author Photo Grimace." Pair with: Our interview with Makkai.
Writer: The Game
Trying to get some writing done? Procrastinate with a game about trying to get some writing done without procrastinating.
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Librarians > Google
A pretty nifty Neil Gaiman quotation appears on the floor of the Duke University Medical Center Library.
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“I know what’s next— / the horns, the hymns.”
Recommended Reading: “Epistrophy” by Jake Adam York, who passed away last December.
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A Necessary Evil
Is the system rigged? Aaron Bady at The New Inquiry discusses the inherent evil of the canon and the general problem with lists. For more on why we care about literary awards in the first place, here is Mark O’Connell from The Millions.
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