The upcoming Supreme Court decision on gay marriage is drawing a lot of attention. But what about the other ruling — the one aimed at grizzled old men? At The Onion, a report on Justice Alito’s recent decision, which tersely states that marriage is a pact between a man and the sea.
“The heart belongs to the tide and the deep alone”
Sit Down, Stephen Fry.
Stuart Jeffries at The Guardian: Stephen Fry gives stand-up comedy a go at the Royal Albert Hall but doesn’t quite have the punchlines for it.
●
●
The Books of Summer
Our Great Second-Half 2014 Book Preview is coming very, very soon. But to warm you up until it finally gets here, you can check out Lev Grossman’s list of “the most likely contenders” for this summer’s “It Book.”
●
●
Clashing Titans, old and new fashioned
Virginia Heffernan weighs in on the whole Wikipedia v. Philip Roth thing, brilliantly pitting “Anglo-American Great Man media empires” against “Polyglot Open-Source new media”.
Transforming Thought Problems into Cultures with Ursula K. Le Guin
Matt Bell reads the works of Ursula K. Le Guin to examine the joy and skill woven into her prose, particularly her worldbuilding.
●
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day: Dovlatov; Rieger; Levine; Kaysen; Jia; Mirvis; Merwin; Wright
New this week: Pushkin Hills by Sergei Dovlatov; The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger; Hyde by Daniel Levine; Cambridge by Girl, Interrupted author Susanna Kaysen; Decoded by Mai Jia; Visible City by Tova Mirvis; The Moon Before Morning by W.S. Merwin; and Caribou by Charles Wright.
●
●
Joyce and Carroll
“But reading Finnegans Wake is more than a matter of collecting one’s favorite quotations – even if there is a huge pleasure in that, especially if you admire truly terrible jokes.” Michael Wood writes an essay on James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, and the origins of clever wordplay for the London Review of Books.