“What a perfect couple, two halves of the same little orange.” Guernica Magazine has a fantastic flash fiction piece by Andrés Neuman in anticipation of his upcoming collection of stories, The Things We Don’t Do.
An Excess of Symmetry
“The Scopes Monkey Trial of American literary culture”
That dictionary sitting on your bookshelf has a more scandalous past than you might think.
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Bring it Back! Literature In the Olympics by 2016!
Fun Fact: “Literature” was an Olympic event until 1948. In fact, several other events were also listed under the umbrella of “Sporting Art,” as Olympic historian John MacAloon points out to NPR. For example, W. B. Yeats’ brother, Jack Butler Yeats, won the “Mixed Painting” silver in 1924; some people even won “Medals for Making Medals!”
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A Bookish Lament
Recommended reading: “A Book Buyer’s Lament,” from Ken Kalfus for the New Yorker.
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Gaining Experience
At Full-Stop, Eric Jett reflects on the wisdom of a possibly apocryphal commandment by Mark Twain: “Never argue with stupid people.”
Record-A-Poem
Celebrate National Poetry Month by recording a poem for the Poetry Foundation.
OED Overload
If you’re eagerly anticipating the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, be prepared to wait until 2034. You can blame the internet for the delay, which has made research easier but also leads to information overload. There are so many new words that the dictionary would be 40 volumes if it ever makes it to print, but expect it to be only online instead. For more on the new OED, read a profile of new editor Michael Proffitt.
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