There’s a tiff going on between Ursula le Guin and Kazuo Ishiguro. After le Guin accused Ishiguro of “despising” the fantasy genre, following an interview with the Times in which he wondered aloud if his readers would be prejudiced against his latest book, Ishiguro defended himself, claiming that he is “firmly on the side of the ogres and the pixies.” You can read a full rundown in The Guardian.
I’m With the Ogres
MIT’s Open Documentary Lab
Andrew Phelps interviews Sarah Wolzin, director of MIT's new Open Documentary Lab, which "brings technologists, storytellers, and scholars together to advance the new arts of documentary." The Lab, according to Phelps, is "part think tank, part incubator for filmmakers and hackers."
Librarians > Google
A pretty nifty Neil Gaiman quotation appears on the floor of the Duke University Medical Center Library.
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Mass(ive) Effect
What effect, if any, are video games having on literature? Tobias Carroll at Hazlitt explores the surprising liminal space between video game narratives and literary fiction. This essay from The Millions is a nice complement.
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A Literary Pathway
Recommended Reading: On the work of Aleksandar Hemon and how literature helps us cope.
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“Do not open until war is over.”
“What he discovered was a box filled with disguised anti-Nazi tracts hidden in packets of tea and shampoo and concealed in miniature books both popular and scholarly.”