Murray Farish‘s debut collection, Inappropriate Behavior, includes tales of fictionalized or alternative history that incline toward the surreal. He discusses the “principally and unaccountably strange” with Evelyn Somers, who has written about his work before, at Bloom. Fancy yourself more weirdness? Head to Weird Fiction Review curated by Jeff VanderMeer, whose Southern Reach trilogy was just released in one volume.
“Principally & Unaccountably Strange”
The Chekhov/Celebrity Quiz
At Flavorwire, test your literary (and tabloid) IQ by trying to match Chekhov’s characters with their closest celebrity counterparts.
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Kafka’s Century
Kafka‘s The Metamorphosis has officially hit the century mark, and over at The Guardian Richard T. Kelly celebrates with “100 thoughts for 100 years.” Pair with our own Matt Seidel‘s thoughts on rereading Kafka’s masterpiece, which you can find here.
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Liberals! Satiricists! Call Out the Big Dogs!
Steve Almond treks deeper into familiar territory in the latest issue of The Baffler, wherein the essayist takes on “our lazy embrace of [Jon] Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert,” an undoubtedly strong “testament to our own impoverished comic standards.” Indeed, Almond notes, our satirists and comics today remain “careful never to question the corrupt precepts of the status quo too vigorously.”
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“In The Shadows”
The Daily Bruin is a running a stunning multimedia series about “the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Malawi, a country that outlaws homosexuality and in which UCLA has a strong research presence.” Two recent UCLA graduates – Sonali Kohli and Blaine Ohigashi – spent 24 days interviewing LGBT Malawians, activists and researchers “about the healthcare and human rights challenges the community faces.” As with the 40 Towns project I’ve mentioned previously, the result of Kohli and Ohigashi’s reportage is a testament to the quality of student journalism.
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Paging Hilla Becher
Recommended Reading: These fifteen short texts in search of Hilla Becher, photographer and life/artistic partner of Bernd Becher: “One of the creations of her and Bernd’s artistic partnership was the seemingly perfect fusion of their visions. ‘No, there is no division of labor,’ they told an interviewer in 1989, in a conversation that pointedly doesn’t designate which of them is speaking. ‘Outsiders cannot tell who has taken a particular photo and we also often forget ourselves. It simply is not important.'”
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Spring Awakening
Virgil and the springtime mysteries of Margaret Fuller.