At The Rumpus, Greg Hunter talks with John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, whose debut novel, Wolf in White Van, came out last month. In the past few weeks, I’ve recommended former Millions-er Emily M. Keeler’s review of the book, as well as a video interview with Darnielle.
Supine and Blind
Women’s Artistic Genius
Over at Public Books, Katie Fitzpatrick writes that Dana Spiotta's Innocents and Others is a novel on women’s artistic genius. Pair with Jason Arthur’s review of the novel.
Literary Podcasts
Recommended recommendations: "Eight Excellent Literary Podcasts for Your Morning Commute."
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5 Scary Stories
Recommended reading, Halloween edition: 5 scary stories written by women, courtesy of BookRiot.
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Are Babies Racist?
Are critically acclaimed authors really terrible? Is feminism bad for women? New York Magazine runs down the greatest hits of what appears, in hindsight, to have been the Decade of Counterintuition (and, in the process, catalogues many of my personal bêtes noires).
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Ancient Poetics
Recommended Reading: Chloe Garcia Roberts and Guangchen Chen on translating ninth century poet Li Shangyin.
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Black Bodies Online
"I couldn’t help but feel that technology had circled back to some of its earliest purposes: broadcasting anti-black violence as widely as possible, as both entertainment and warning." Our own Ismail Muhammad writes for Real Life about the tension between bearing witness and perpetuating paradigms of white supremacy while on the web. And if you haven't yet read it, do spend some time with this review of Nate Marshall's Wild Hundreds, which provides some fortification.
Writing Sarcastically
Sarcasm makes the Internet go round. No, seriously, it basically does, and over at The Toast a linguist examines some of the strategies writers have developed, or are trying to develop, to communicate that sarcasm through writing, without the benefit of an eye-roll and a different tone of voice.
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Readers and Returns
"I would argue that decent books coverage in a daily newspaper — especially when it’s presented in such a way that readers are likely to stumble over it and discover titles they might not otherwise have heard of — is more supportive of writers in the long run than a scholarship program." At Salon, Laura Miller explores literary culture and the downsides of the MFA, which include teaching high school.