From McSweeney’s: These opening remarks made by John Hodgman at a literary reading shortly after September 11, 2001. This study on the literature of 9/11 from A-J Aronstein at The Millions is a sobering, related piece.
Only Humbled
“Where flash becomes word and silents selfloud.”
Are you still not following Pentametron, even after I urged you to do so last week? (And even after New York Magazine added it to its Approval Matrix?) Well, if that’s the case, I shouldn’t even share Earwickr with you. You don’t deserve to read Finnegans Wake spelled out on your Twitter timeline, 140 characters at a time. (Bonus: Michael Chabon reviews James Joyce’s final work for The New York Review of Books.)
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Nerdist Wilco
A Nerdist podcast featuring Wil Wheaton and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy in which Tweedy discusses his path to becoming a musician, how his kids like having “a rockstar for a dad,” and lets listeners in on their sound check at The Wiltern? Well, there goes your Monday afternoon.
Remembering Ray Bradbury
A moving tribute to Ray Bradbury on The Paris Review Daily from his one time fact checker Stephen Andrew Hiltner: “Ray Bradbury, who never went to college and was entirely library educated, had what so many of the sophisticated, MFA-carrying writers today lack: passion, vitality, emotional awareness.” Also: Wired has collected a bunch of reminiscences from science fiction writers, including Ursula K. Le Guin.
Finding Waldo
He’s the world’s most wanted fugitive, yet somehow the man wearing the red-striped shirt and nerd glasses escaped us until now. Yes, we’re talking about Where’s Waldo? At Slate, Ben Blatt found Waldo’s pattern, so you can spot him every time and impress your relatives this holiday season.
Book Reviewing as Blood Sport
Anthology of African LGBT Writing
Poet Abayomi Animashaun has issued a call for “poems by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals living in Africa and in the Diaspora.” Submissions “of high merit” will be considered for a forthcoming anthology.
Incendiary Verse
Do you love poetry, but often wish you were monitored on more government watchlists? Well, now you can scratch both of those itches by purchasing Poetry of the Taliban, a new anthology endorsed by and published on the group’s website. Unsurprisingly, the book has garnered its share of criticism, but as Melville House’s Kelly Burdick notes, it also has a coalition of allies and proponents.