In The Age of The Crisis of Man, a new book by n + 1 co-founder and editor Mark Greif, the author examines the life and death of the concept of “man,” aka a unified humankind that could be said to suffer from particular conflicts. It was born in the thirties, with the rise of Fascism, but persisted for decades, eventually giving way to a more diversified view of humanity. In Tablet, Adam Kirsch dives into Greif’s arguments.
The Fall of “Man”
Dispatch from Korea
“For American readers, literary evocations of Korea have come, for the most part, in the form of dystopian novels written by people without any direct connection to the country.” Ed Park on reading Dalkey Archive Press’s series Library of Korean Literature, launched in collaboration with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.
Susan Orlean’s Obsessions
The Rumpus interviews Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief & most recently Rin Tin Tin) about her obsession with other people’s obsessions.
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Kitty Lit
If you find cat hair in a book you checked out of the Novorossiysk Library, don’t worry. It belongs to the newest librarian. Kuzya the cat started off as a pet at the Russian library but was promoted after patronage increased due to his presence. The new library assistant even wears a bow tie.
Goodbye, Britannica
After nearly a quarter of a millennium, the Encyclopedia Britannica is ending its print run. While the publication plans to move to a digital subscription based model, and to continue to gather information about the known world, many are sad to note its passing. Roxane Gay offers a particularly heartfelt eulogy: ” it was exciting to open the huge box and pull out the leather bound volumes, so many of them, the pages lined in gold.”
Real People
“Here is the last and biggest piece of advice I have: If you have a story that you want to tell, but you’re afraid that someone in your life is going to feel wounded, whether that feeling is justified or not, fair or not, tell it anyway.” Emma Straub, who recently wrote about her Year in Reading, gives some advice on fictionalizing real people in an essay for Rookie.
On Colors and the Mind
Here’s a fascinating article by Aatish Bhatia about “how we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains.” Grab a seat; this is a good one.
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An Unusual Inheritance
“They were still dressed for the funeral when their inheritance showed up.” Granta magazine has a new short story by Amelia Gray, whose literary rise we considered back in 2012.
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Seems About Right
“Post-truth” has been named word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries, reports The Guardian. Considered an adjective, its definition is “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The Dictionaries report its first use in 1992 by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in relation to Iran-Contra and the first Gulf War. And we thought Colbert’s “truthiness” was funny.