As a young girl in the 1980s, Melissa Carroll played with My Little Pony dolls, in part because, as she puts it, “I knew I’d better have one.” Nearly thirty years on, she’s fascinated by the new surge of interest in the dolls, especially the interest displayed by the men who call themselves Bronies. At The Rumpus, her Sunday essay on the rise of the Brony and gender dynamics in America.
“A big furry fish in a tiny barrel”
Tuesday New Release Day: Hosseini, Nesbø, Tarttelin, Tolkien, Packer
New this week: And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini; The Redeemer, a new Harry Hole novel from Jo Nesbø (see our interview); and Abigail Tarttelin's debut novel Golden Boy. Also out: The Fall of Arthur, J.R.R. Tolkien's epic poem, and George Packer's The Unwinding.
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Sensible Tourists
Recommended Reading: Over at The Offing, a new story by Joy Williams describes what happens when a sad group of American tourists goes to Cornwall, England.
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A Bit of Advice
Recommended reading: Andrew Solomon draws from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and gives some advice for young writers. Pair with our own look at "the best advice writers ever received."
Spit Spat
“I can tell you that, as of today, I don’t feel any different about Mr Whitehead, or his review, or my response.” Richard Ford doubles down on his reaction to a negative 2001 review by fellow novelist Colson Whitehead. (Said response, in case you missed it, was to tell Whitehead 'you’re a kid, you should grow up,' and spit in his face.) We hope Whitehead is laughing at home with his Pulitzer Prize, recently awarded for last year's literary juggernaut The Underground Railroad. And as our own Emily St. John Mandel reminds us, there are far more gracious ways to respond to criticism.
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Tilting at Political Office
"He represents a failure of empiricism — an unreliability arising not from the absence of rationality, but from the stubborn complexity of perception. This, I would argue, is precisely how the 2016 election went down." In an article for The Los Angeles Review of Books, Aaron R. Hanlon argues that Cervantes' classic provides the perfect framework for understanding contemporary America, concluding that "Don Quixote is such a player in US politics that he might as well run for office." Our own C. Max Magee read Quixote not long after founding the site, deeming it "essential to all who wish to understand 'the novel' as a literary form."
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