Recommended Reading: Marci Shore on reading Tony Judt’s Postwar in modern Ukraine.
Post-Maidan
Archer as Animated Comix
Charles Bock traces the lineage of FX’s Archer past fellow animated shows like The Simpsons and all the way back to comics. Or, more specifically, Bock traces the lineage back to comix, “cartoons for adults — or, rather, for those above the age of consent.”
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Guerilla Reading
Does literature belong on the streets? Thanks to some forward-thinking initiatives like the Coffee Sleeves Conversation at Coffee House Press and the Chicago-based project "Poem While You Wait," (in which poets stationed around the city produce original, on-demand poems for five dollars a piece) literature is finding its way to the masses.
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Curiosities
Who killed the literary critic?: "In the age of blogging, great critics appear to be on life support. Salon's book reviewers discuss snobbery, how to make criticism fun and the need for cultural gatekeepers." The ongoing, seemingly never ending discussion of the death of literature and criticism continues, though Salon's interest in "how to make criticism fun" is a promising sign.Online used book marketplace AbeBooks looks at the yearbook collecting subculture. The most expensive yearbook to every be sold on the site? The Ole Miss Yearbook 1921 containing "William Faulkner's poem, 'Nocturne,' in facsimile of the author's stylized printing over a two-page spread along with several Faulkner drawings."Buzz presents the Nixon Rock on his Madonna of the Toast blog.Carolyn has been on an enviable literary-themed roadtrip. Luckily we can read along at home.
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Dispatch from Mississippi
Students from the Mississippi Schools for Mathematics and Science share poems and essays about life in their home state, inspired by William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Richard Wright.
Barry Hannah, 1942-2010
Barry Hannah, the mind-blowing author of Airships and many other books, died Monday at age 67.
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