Recommended reading: Jason Arthur bids “Good Riddance to the Good-Bye-To-New-York Essay” for The Rumpus. Pair with Eryn Loeb‘s review of Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and our own Elizabeth Minkel‘s account of rereading Didion‘s original “Goodbye to All That.”
Good Riddance
Drawing Autism
April is Autism Awareness Month, and a new paperback edition of Drawing Autism displays artwork created by artists all along the spectrum. You can take a look at some examples over here, and New Yorkers can hear from the book’s editor at the United Nations on April 2nd.
The Freedom of Limits
“Limits stop you from living a life without limits,” writes Augusten Burroughs. “Of course, this is only an illusion. What limits really do is give you an acceptable excuse to avoid doing something.” (He’s talking about life, not Oulipo.) The piece is excerpted from his recent book, This Is How.
The Personal Is Political, the Political is Personal
Over at Electric Literature, John Freeman profiles Year in Reading alumnus Ben Lerner, newly minted MacArthur genius and author of two novels in which “the political opens a path for the personal, just as the personal urges him to engage the political.” Freeman writes, “This blending—of perception and politics—comes right out of how Lerner sees the world in real life.” Pair with Christopher Wood’s Millions review of Lerner’s 10:04.
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Sex Appeal
You may remember the brouhaha surrounding Bustle, the first website in history to market primarily to women. Now, in this week’s New Yorker, Lizzie Widdicombe profiles the website, which she describes by pointing out that “[its] articles are modest, but the ambitions of its founder, a young Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Bryan Goldberg, are not.”
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A Review in Comics
Book reviews are great and all, but even we sometimes feel they're missing something. Enter Kevin Thomas, whose HORN! illustrated reviews for The Rumpus are beautiful and informative in under 9 panels. Compare his pieces on Roxane Gay's An Untamed State or Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams to our reviews here and here, and be sure to check out the just-published HORN! The Collected Reviews.
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In Defense of Distraction
“Utter devotion to the principle that distraction is Satan and writing is paramount can be just as poisonous as an excess of diversion,” writes Benjamin Nugent.
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One step further back, Anthony Graves had the original original Goodbye to All That/