This week in book-related infographics: an “Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature’s Most Epic Road Trips.”
Most Epic
JFK on the Decline of Physical Fitness
Recommended Reading: John F. Kennedy’s 1960 essay, “The Soft American,” in which the president warns us about “an increasingly large number of young Americans who are neglecting their bodies.”
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Longreads Launches Membership Drive
Like the Girl Scouts, Longreads offers a tantalizing product that many people find indispensable. And, also like the Girl Scouts, they now do membership drives. To participate, sign up to be a member and donate a minimum of $3 a month or $30 a year.
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The Future United States of America
In Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams's new anthology, they gather a group of writers to imagine the country's future using speculative fiction.
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The Ongoing Reconsideration of Dave Eggers
The Guardian offers a long, worthwhile profile of Dave Eggers, who suddenly is being considered and reconsidered seemingly everywhere. “The McSweeney’s empire… often gets characterised as a kind of cabal: a hip, young gang. [Eggers] and [wife Vendela] Vida, whose writerly circle includes Nick Hornby, Rick Moody, Jonathan Lethem and Joyce Carol Oates, tend to be seen as tastemakers. He thinks this is ridiculous.” (Thanks Emre!)
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From Iowa to Illinois
Poets & Writers‘ 2011 MFA rankings are out, and poet John Gallaher has some questions for students in the top 20 programs. (via The Rumpus)
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What’s “Appropriate”
We’ve been following the YA debate quite attentively – I wrote about it just last week – but Sarah Burnes‘s addition to the conversation, a blog post for The Paris Review, is one of the most eloquent I’ve read. In defense of reading YA fiction as a “grown-up” she writes, “The binary between children’s and adult fiction is a false one, based on a limited conception of the self. I have not ceased to be the person I was when I was an adolescent; in fact, to think so seems to me like a kind of dissociation from a crucial aspect of one’s self. And the critic should be concerned with what is good and what is bad, what is art and what is not—not with what’s ‘appropriate.'”
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