Recommended Reading: Alex Preston on Milan Kundera’s first novel in fifteen years.
Festivities
Opiates
“The cause of death/was living/the immediate cause/of death was/living in Moscow.” At n +1’s website, Ainsley Morse and Bela Shayevich excerpt their translations of the Soviet poet Vsevolod Nekrasov.
When Technology Knows You Better Than You
Psychotherapist Ariel Garten redefines consciousness at TEDx Toronto. “The problem with escaping your day-to-day life,” she says, “is that you have to come home eventually.” Her question, which she answers in the affirmative, is whether we can “find ways to know ourselves without the escape? Can we redefine our relationship with the technologized world in order to have the heightened sense of self-awareness that we seek? Can we live here and now in our wired web, and still follow those ancient instructions: ‘Know thyself’?”
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“Bad Neil Gaiman”
Recommended watching: Neil Gaiman reads “bad Neil Gaiman” stories.
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Claire Messud on the Value of an Ordinary Life
The author discusses social media, finding hope in art, and her new essay collection, Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write.
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How to Be a Book Critic
As part of an ongoing series, Critical Mass asks book critics to name five books that should be found in any reviewer’s library — Ruth Franklin of The New Republic posts her picks. (via Book Bench)