Back in 2011, our founder C. Max Magee pointed to the fan art of Chris Ayers, who was inspired by DFW’s Infinite Jest. Now, Ayers has a new series, drawn from Margaret Atwood’s MaddAdam trilogy, that illustrates the corporate horrors of the trilogy’s fictional dystopia. Pair with Vanessa Blakeslee on Atwood’s In Other Worlds.
No More McNuggets
The Stanford Letters
“I’m annoyed that so many young rapists lack interest in their own motivations, or are led to believe that an absence of real psychic motive will make the crime merely an act, when really it’s the uninterested mereness of the act that makes it feel, to some victims, so criminal.” Sarah Nicole Prickett compares the many letters released following Brock Turner’s trial at n+1.
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Longreads.edu
The Longreads team has teamed up with Syracuse assistant professor Aileen Gallagher in order to “search for and share outstanding student work.” If you’ve read (or written) something fantastic this past school year, they encourage you to tag it #college #longreads on Twitter or Tumblr.
Why Criticism Matters
“We live in the age of opinion — offered instantly, effusively and in increasingly strident tones. Much of it goes by the name of criticism, and in the most superficial sense this is accurate.” The New York Times approached six accomplished critics, Stephen Burns, Katie Roiphe, Pankaj Mishra, Adam Kirsch, Sam Anderson, and Elif Batuman to explain, in the spirit of Alfred Kazin, “what it is they do, why they do it and why it matters.”
DWF – Dating While Feminist
Samhita Mukhopadhyay’s new book Outdated: How Dating is Ruining Your Love Life starts a public conversation about the pitfalls of Dating While Feminist (DWF).
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Oxford Marginalia Group
Recommended reading: Lauren Collins writes for The New Yorker about the Oxford University Marginalia group and the fate of bookish scribblings.
The Experience of Being Human
Recommended Reading: Over at BOMB Magazine, Jesse Ball and Catherine Lacey discuss strategies for a non-interview, why they write, and poetry’s “direct utility toward experience.”
People Truly Engaged in Life Have Messy Houses
The Guardian interviews Year in Reading alumna Ottessa Moshfegh about her writing life, noir fiction, and her novel Eileen. As she puts it, “I’m interested in taking establishment genre and turning it on its head. I didn’t really set out to write a noir novel and I don’t know if I exactly have.”