Catapult.co, a new literary website and publisher from the founders of Electric Literature and Black Balloon Publishing, has debuted online this week. It features stories by Padgett Powell and Joy Williams, and a remarkable essay about living in New York by Alexander Chee.
Launching Catapult
The Books That Shaped America
Mark Dimunation was on the committee that selected the 88 books for the Library of Congress’s current “Books That Shaped America” exhibit. Recently he did an interview with NPR‘s Lynn Neary in which he explained how he arrived at his decisions to include such works as Goodnight Moon, The Joy Of Cooking, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
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No Word on What He Thought of Richard Simmons
In a review of My 1980s & Other Essays, Adam Kirsch reveals that Wayne Koestenbaum once compared a verse from a Robert Lowell poem to Buns of Steel. (Yes, that Buns of Steel.)
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Frank O’Hara: 21st Century Poet?
In a piece for The Atlantic, Micah Mattix responds to the 50th Anniversary Edition of Lunch Poems with a reflection on the social media-esque quality of Frank O’Hara‘s poetry. “O’Hara’s Lunch Poems—like Facebook posts or tweets—shares, saves, and re-creates the poet’s experience of the world. He addresses others in order to combat a sense of loneliness, sharing his gossipy, sometimes snarky take of modern life, his unfiltered enthusiasm, and his boredom in a direct, conversational tone. In short, Lunch Poems, while 50 years old, is a very 21st-century book.”
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The Future by Philip K. Dick
“Still, what he captured with genius was the ontological unease of a world in which the human and the abhuman, the real and the fake, blur together.” An essay in the Boston Review argues the importance of Philip K. Dick‘s literature— where the real and fake intersect and collide — and the world we live in today. From our archive: on the pleasures of Dick’s sometimes awful prose.
Press Play
The New York Times unveiled a new music blog entitled Press Play. Each week, the blog will “present tracks from an upcoming new album.”
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