New at The Point: an incisive look at Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis that calls it “the most prescient American novel of the past fifteen years” and asks,”is it possible to mount any meaningful resistance to capitalism on the level of culture?” The latest print issue features this essay as well as a symposium on privacy, and will be launched at a release party in Hyde Park on Saturday night.
The Point Issue 9: On Art, Commerce, and the Prescience of DeLillo’s Cosmopolis
United Slang of America
(Interactive) Infographic of the Week: Slate’s United Slang of America. Click each state to find out more about the state-specific slang. You could also read our own Michael Bourne’s piece on, like, why the word like is really cool!
The Opposite of #AmWriting
Writing a novel is an all-consuming project, so can you imagine not telling anyone? At The New York Times, Alice Mattison discusses keeping her novels secrets until at least the third draft. “If I talk about the book, I believe — I cannot help believing — my characters will be angry, and will no longer confide in me about their embarrassing, troubled lives.” On another side of the secrecy spectrum, Emma Straub writes about what it’s like to keep a personal secret even as her literary life was booming.
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The Literature of Skateboarding
Joel Rice has a new column up at McSweeney’s, in which he looks at “the literature of skateboarding.” All in all, this kind of reflective writing should pair nicely with Nick Courage’s fantastic Paris Review piece from last month. (Bonus: Rice’s column linked above also features a nice little bit of David Foster Wallace memorabilia.)
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Advice from a Man-Bear
Gary Socquet over at The Nervous Breakdown has published an online advice column, answered by a part-man, part-bear. (via)
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Hustle and Flow
“Notice how Malbecco, as Gelosy, lives outside of time, a death-in-life: he can ‘never dye, but dying lives.’ In other words, embrace a quality entirely—even, I would argue, a less pejorative quality, like hustle—and it overmasters you. You’re doomed.” Rowan Ricardo Phillips, basketball columnist for The Paris Review, on Edmund Spenser, hustle, and the New York Knicks.
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This Writing Life
“I thought there were would be more in this writing life, an easier path to walk. I write those words and know they are the unwise thoughts of my younger self and that I am still too stubborn to give up on my dreams. When Annie Dillard invited me outside for that smoke, she knew very well what it would mean to a young writer like me. She intuited my ambitions and it was her way of encouraging me.” This essay is ostensibly about smoking cigarettes and playing catch with Annie Dillard, but it’s also about the incredibly important role that an established writer can play in helping a struggling up-and-comer.
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Point Omega is a wonderful book as well. The literary establishment, and those prone to pick their books according to the latest hype and fashion, wrote off DeLillo after Underworld, acted as if he was an old man with nothing left to say, or, that what he had to say was of little importance and derivative of his earliest work. But The Body Artist, Cosmopolis, and Point Omega and three of his best novels. DeLillo is a brilliant diagnostician of American culture, and that ability hasn’t abated with time, it’s only gotten more acute. The problem is you have to work, really work, while reading his prose, and some people just don’t want to. They want their truth to go down easy. DeLillo is not easy, but he’s essential. Always has been, always will be. When Cosmopolis came out it was waved off with a sigh. In this way late DeLillo reminds me of late Kubrick (of The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut), in that he is only getting better with age, but no one will admit it, because in this country, to be old is tantamount to being invisible at worst, or being considered irrelevant at best.