Few people have heard of Iceberg Slim, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been important. His autobiography, published in 1967, tells the story of his life as a pimp, and one of his novels, Trick Baby, was made into a 1972 movie. He’s been called “the Mark Twain of hip-hop.” At Salon, Scott Timberg talks with Justin Gifford, the author of a new biography of Slim.
The Real Slim
Paradox of Choice
Despite the "grotesquerie of courtship rituals" they present, Roxane Gay enjoys watching The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, in part because, as she explains, they hearken back to America's Puritan origins. In The New York Times, the essayist, novelist and Year in Reading alum reflects on a guilty pleasure.
Time to get on with it
At Open Letters, Rohan Maitzen writes about her awakening to the chasm between an academic appreciation for books and "a more personal, affective, and engaged vision of criticism. It has been surprising and exciting to me to realize how blinkered I was about non-academic book culture, and chastening to realize how little use my own specialized reading has been as preparation to join in."
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I Grow Old
"If there is one thing more depressing than reading other people’s old letters it is reading one’s own." Becoming T. S. Eliot.
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Oh, Mr. Rochester!
Move over, Mr. Darcy and Edward Cullen: The readers of Mills & Boon romance novels (the UK's answer to Harlequin romances) have voted Mr. Rochester of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre the most romantic hero in literature.
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Staff Writer Sonya Chung at Tin House
At the Tin House blog, I write about my literary education in independent bookstores Also, my piece about James Salter appears in Tin House's current issue.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Minot; Antopol; Cameron; de Botton; Troy; Wolf; Cotter; Conde
Out this week: Thirty Girls by Susan Minot; The UnAmericans by Molly Antopol; The Bear by Claire Cameron; The News: A User’s Manual by Alain de Botton; The Quiet Streets of Winslow by Judy Troy; a new translation of August by Christa Wolf; The Parallel Apartments by Bill Cotter; and The Journey of a Caribbean Writer by Maryse Condé. For more on these and other new releases, check out our Great 2014 Book Preview.
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