“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.
We Need to Lie Down
Astaroth, Prince of Hell
Here’s to wishing you a spooky Halloween with this piece by Micah Nathan of The Paris Review. Nathan hearkens back to his boyhood–a much simpler time of casual demon-summoning, Satanism, and the occult. This essay by our own Anne K. Yoder will satisfy any lingering desire for the four Humors.
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The Poor Mouth
You’ve likely heard that artists these days are in trouble. The probability that your average creative person will make a living from their art is getting smaller by the day. But amidst all this hand-wringing, we forget one simple fact -- it’s always been getting worse, and there’s always been something killing culture. At Slate, Evan Kindley writes about Scott Timberg’s new book Culture Crash, asking whether the Internet is really the dread force it’s often made out to be.
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“Did you know that the Bosphorus is drying up?”
Orhan Pamuk paints a nightmarish picture of the land laid bare when the Bosphorus dries up.
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Short Form Story Contest
The Short Form is holding a short, short fiction contest, and the deadline is March 31st. Submit one or two stories no longer than 500 words for a shot at winning Frank Stanford’s Conditions Uncertain & Likely to Pass Away as well as internet stardom.
I created an internet buzz when I smiled
The Amherst College Archives have discovered what could be the second photograph in existence of Emily Dickinson.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Grey, Clowes, Enright, Shin
The much discussed Fifty Shades of Grey arrives as a paperback today, though one wonders if readers will be as willing to read it if they must shed the privacy of the e-reader. Also out is the gorgeous retrospective, The Art of Daniel Clowes. The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright and MAN Asian Literary Prize winner Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin are new in paperback.
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