Over the past fifteen years, Mohsin Hamid has moved from New York, to London, and to Lahore, Pakistan, with stints in Italy and Greece. His new book, which came out yesterday, is a series of essays about his odyssey across the world, chronicling his observations and experiences that led him to move. At Bookforum, a review by Jake Lamar.
The Peripatetic
Charles Darwin’s Interest in “Neuropsychiatric Photography”
In the late 1860s, James Crichton-Browne, director of the West Riding Lunatic Asylum, gave Charles Darwin a collection of photographic portraits depicting the “afflicted and insane.” What followed was a six-year relationship in which both men corresponded about “the physical manifestations of natural selection.”
The Book of Exodus
“What we call them is entirely irrelevant: emigrants, migrants, refugees, exiles—we all know to whom we refer. Refugeedom is our common cultural meme. It is the story with which Christian civilization begins. We bear the imprint of the furious index finger God used to banish Adam and Eve from Eden.” Dubravka Ugrešić writes about displacement and the refugee crisis for the Literary Hub. Pair with Arnon Grunberg's Millions essay on Ugrešić’s legacy.
In/sane
If you’re not already a fan of Will Self, his new book, Shark, may not be the best place to start. As Walker Rutter-Bowman points out, the book dispatches with many of the conventions of modern writing, including line breaks, paragraphs and dialogue tags. But it’s still an effort worthy of its author, he writes: “Here is a hunk of modernism that poignantly, beautifully, and, it seems, genuinely renders mental states of sanity and insanity while smudging the gradations in between."
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Oh Nothing, Just Drawing Vampires
Yesterday was Bram Stoker’s birthday, a milestone which didn’t go unrecognized by the mischievous doodlers at Google. Over at Galleycat, a list of his books you can download for free on your e-reader.
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Witty Pun of Some Kind
“In addition, irrelevant and misleading personal anecdote. However, oversimplification of first Googled author (citation: p. 37). Thesis statement which doesn’t follow whatsoever from the previous.” A generic college paper.
Sun Ra’s True Birthday
Seth Colter Walls shares some Sun Ra tracks while commenting on the conclusion of his Arkestra’s tour in Lincoln Center. As always, any piece about the musician is enriched with a reading of Jake Adam York’s poem, “At Sun Ra’s Grave.”
What Would Atticus Do?
Harper Lee is suing her literary agent over royalties for To Kill A Mockingbird.
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