“As everyday existence becomes more punitive for all but the monied few, more and more frustrated, volatile individuals will seek each other out online, aggravate whatever lethal fairy tale suits their pathology, and, ultimately, transfer their rage from the screen world to the real one.” Gary Indiana reviews Masha Gessen’s The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy for the London Review of Books.
An American Tragedy
In Good Standing
This one goes out to all you procrastinators out there. A woman in Auckland, New Zealand has just returned a library book (Myths and Legends of Maoriland) a cool sixty-seven years late–she had “been meaning to return it” for decades. Hopefully she didn’t leave any boogers.
●
●
After the last word
This weekend–at 2:30 am on Saturday, to be precise–Twitter bot @everyword was set to complete its 7-year run with the final word in the English language: “zymurgy.” Unexpectedly, the bot tweeted again half an hour later–with a nontraditional character it had surreptitiously glossed on the first run: éclair. Since @everyword, like Lazarus, probably won’t get the same fuss after its second death, check out The Guardian’s interview with creator Adam Parrish now.
●
●
Green Whisky
9,000 homes in Scotland are going to be powered by whisky. Could Maker’s Mark be bringing a similar idea to our side of the pond?
●
●
An Interview With Marilynne Robinson
Read here, in the University of Washington’s alumni magazine, about how Marilynne Robinson approaches a book’s essence as “an elaborate needlepoint of decisions and observations”; how novels visit upon her as surprises; and how her recent move to New York might spawn yet another gift to readers.
●
●
Rainy Day Books
Someone left a manuscript out in the rain. On their tumblr blog, Doubleday Books share two pictures of their offices repurposed to dry it out.