Laura Bennett writes for Slate about how personal essays are taking over the internet. “I think there is just a very fine line between providing a platform for these writers and exploiting them,” says one editor.
Writing the Self
Blairian
Since his death in 1950, George Orwell has grown more and more popular, so much so that his eponymous adjective is now widely used even by ideological enemies. So how did this state of affairs come about? In the new Intelligent Life, an offshoot of The Economist, Robert Butler delves into the story of how Orwell became an icon. Pair with: Vishwas Gaitonde on his visit to Orwell’s birthplace.
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Harry Potter and the Teflon Cloak
We’ve been jealous of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak since The Sorcerer’s Stone. Now scientists can make an invisibility cloak in 15 minutes with Teflon. We’ll never get our Hogwarts acceptance letter, but this is pretty close.
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Writing Without Rain
“We don’t yet know how to make it rain. But increasingly, we may be talking about what to do when the rain doesn’t come.” Anna North writes for The New York Times about literature in the age of drought.
Best Arts and Lit Pieces Contest
3 Quarks Daily is running an Arts & Literature Prize to find the best blog writing in that category. Millions readers, we’d love it if you nominated some of your favorite Millions pieces from the last year for the prize.
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Curiosities
The O.E.D., the ultimate bibliophile’s extravagance may never again appear in a new print edition, according to the New York Times. (via)”The most talked about books of the 2008 spring season,” according to European newspapers.Like Kennedy buffs hunched over stills from the Zapruder film, Bolaño enthusiasts may find themselves scrutinizing the cover design for 2666 (featured on the back flap of the galley).Wyatt Mason, one of America’s best critics, enters the blog fray. As does The New Yorker.”The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth.“
Read/Write NY
Today, stuff yourself on envy and/or nostalgia for the NYC literary life. First, whet your appetite on the New Yorker’s gorgeous illustrations of notable bookstores, including one “the size of a luxurious Park Avenue closet.” Continue to a responsible main course essay on Choire Sicha, The Awl, and the Brooklyn loft building where it was founded and resides: a place that is “pleasant” but “a little dumpy, too, because that’s sort of our MO.” For dessert, savor Erin Loeb’s personal essay on leaving New York, and finish with a fittingly varied cheese course of other writers also saying goodbye.
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