At some point, Machiavelli became Machiavellian, which is to say that his personal views evolved into the self-centered credo we recognize. At Salon, an excerpt of a new biography of the writer, which digs up the formative events of his early life.
The Art of Fear
White Noise on White Noise
“In the silence, there is solitude. In the solitude, there is silence. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature.” Don DeLillo, author of White Noise, “reviews“ Taylor Swift‘s white noise for The Atlantic.
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Peeling Back the “Mask of the Whiskey Gentry”
In a long investigation of Hunter S. Thompson’s classic essay, “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” (PDF), Josh Roiland takes readers to church by pointing out exactly what’s so alluring about the piece, which “scholars often point to … as the origin of Gonzo Journalism.”
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Line / Break
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Choose Your Own Literary Dystopia
Which dystopian future is right for you? Kurt Vonnegut’s? George Orwell’s? Margaret Atwood’s? Take Flavorwire’s simple quiz to find out!
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400 Year of Shakespeare
To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, check out 25 author’s reflections on his work. (The tube map has also been recreated in his honor.) You could also read Stefanie Peters’s thoughts on why we continue to rewrite the Bard’s stories.
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The Rebel Librarian
Before the regime change in Burma, Ye Htet Oo ran a secret library even though he risked facing “three months in jail for every book he lent without permission from the censorship board.”
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Pik-Shuen Fung Explores the Multiplicity of Experience
Pik-Shuen Fung discusses her debut novel, Ghost Forest, and explains how seemingly disparate emotions play a big role in her fiction.
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Paying Hommage
There’s a new literary magazine on the digital shelves. The Neu Jorker is “an hommage d’triomphe” to a magazine with an eerily similar name.
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