“An ambidextrous cardsharp, who took losing as a personal insult; a proletarian agitator, who dressed like a dandy; a germ-fearing hypochondriac, smoking 100 cigarettes a day; a lady-killer with rotten teeth, causing a string of abortions wherever he went.” On the Soviet poet Mayakovksy.
Bad Boys
Poet Rocker
Paul Muldoon's band, The Wayside Shrines, is the latest project for Paul Kolderie, the Brooklyn-based producer for Radiohead and Pixies. (via)
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Matters of Public Safety
Last week, Kyle Boelte reviewed On Immunity by Eula Biss, delving into its lengthy history of inoculation and public health. At the Harper’s blog, Jeffery Gleaves talks with Biss as part of their Six Questions feature, asking her about Susan Sontag, public versus private danger and the relationship between capitalism and anti-vaccination sentiment.
Novelist of ideas
Millions contributor Charles Finch writes about Norman Rush, author of Mortals and Mating, "There is the constant possibility that the next sentence is about to tell us something new." Pair with our own review.
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Pre-Revolutionary Russia… In Living Color
Tsar Nicholas II commissioned Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky to document pre-revolutionary Russia. His color photographs taken between 1904 and 1916 are incredible.
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An Unquenchable Thirst
In An Unquenchable Thirst by Mary Johnson, the former nun, who served alongside Mother Teresa, details her disenchantment with the religious life she once found so appealing.
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