Still haven’t read our own Edan Lepucki’s Colbert-endorsed novel California? Here’s another review to whet your appetite. In the latest Kenyon Review, John Domini writes that “Lepucki, however, not only upends expectation, but also parses out a few good surprises.”
Twists and Turns
The Softer Side of HAL
No matter how you feel about poetry readings, you should take a look at this video, which excerpts the Stanford Computer Science Department’s first-ever Code Poetry Slam.
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Just Kids Playlist
As Rachel Syme points out, the person who made the Spotify playlist of every song mentioned in Patti Smith’s Just Kids deserves a free drink or two.
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“I have no taste for self-revelation”
In 1970, a journalist named Joseph Epstein wrote an essay for Harper’s that came to a frightening conclusion: that Epstein would, if possible, “wish homosexuality off the face of the Earth.” The incendiary language inspired Merle Miller, a former editor at the magazine, to publish a call-to-arms, “What It Means to Be a Homosexual,” that became the basis of the book On Being Different. Emily Greenhouse puts the essay in context at Page-Turner.
Dreaming and Writing
Maria Popova writes on Freud’s The Interpretations of Dreams, childhood, and the unconscious. For The Millions, Chloe Benjamin writes about fiction and dreaming.
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It Never Leaves You
The English major is more than just a common course of study, friends. The English major is a way of life. (via Arts and Letters Daily)
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We Need to Lie Down
“But migraines! Everyone relishes a migraine. They have a literal aura! Migraines foster the sort of pure narcissism that only intense, essentially benign pain can. We sufferers (that’s how it’s described, “migraine sufferer”) feel it is meet and right that the migraine should be dramatized in films like Pi or White Heat; this strengthens the perception that migraines are the hallmark of geniuses, or at least psychopaths. Joan Didion writes about them; of course she does.” Sadie Stein on the allure of the headache to end all headaches.
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