Just in time for AWP, The New York Times has published a look at “Why Writers Love to Hate the MFA.” We’ve published several other perspectives on the degree over the years, like this, this, this and this.
Love to Hate
Rhyme Time
Now this is a headline for the ages: “‘Self-Harmers are Not Just Depressives’: Writing a Book About Cutters Who Cook.” (Incidentally, the book in question is Jessica Soffer’s Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots, which we covered last week.)
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“It is true that if there exists a ‘writer’s writer,’ [George] Saunders is the guy”
Joel Lovell profiles George Saunders for The New York Times, and he gives a killer endorsement for Saunders’s latest book, Tenth of December. The author’s collection from thirteen years ago, Pastoralia, was picked on our site as being among the “Best of the Millennium.”
The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance
(Reluctantly) Recommended Reading: On the surprising racism of children’s books.
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On Democracy, Writing, Faith
Last month, while traveling through Des Moines, Iowa, President Barack Obama had the chance to interview one of his favorite authors: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson. The first part of the conversation was just published in the NYRB and the second part will appear in the next issue. Obama, who is a big fan of Robinson, had recently quoted her in his eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, one of nine victims in the shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
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Epic Fail
When did Samuel Beckett’s “fail better” become the motto of Silicon Valley? At Slate, our own Mark O’Connell traces the history of the phrase. “Fail Better, with its TEDishly counterintuitive feel, is the literary takeaway par excellence; it’s usefully suggestive, too, of the corporate propaganda of productivity, with its appeals to ‘think different’ or ‘work smarter’ or ‘just do it.'”