Recommended Listening: An interview with Kazuo Ishiguro on Hazlitt’s podcast The Arcade. Our own Lydia Kiesling reviews his latest work, The Buried Giant.
Speaking with Ishiguro
RapGenius Breaks Down “The Wasteland”
Nineteen intrepid RapGenius users set out to break down the “cultural clusterf*ck and middle finger to the stripped-down simplicity of the Imagists” otherwise known as T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland.”
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Is There Life on Pallas?
John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar isn’t the only vintage science fiction novel making waves this week. Andrew Joron takes a look at “German fantasist” Paul Scheerbart’s Lesabéndio – a 1913 novel that was recently reissued by the folks at Wakefield Press.
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Sudoku Comics
Sudoku getting too easy, you say? Try making (or, rather, writing) one instead, like this nine-paneled comic that works across, down, or on a diagonal.
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Listen Carefully
Recommended Listening: Poet Rachel Zucker speaks with Erika Meitner about straight-forward poetics and poetry as a tool for social justice.
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The VQR’s Winter Issue Is Here
If for some unspeakable reason you didn’t follow my advice when I urged you to subscribe to the VQR over a year ago, then perhaps you need more convincing. Enter: Ron Charles. He’s got a brief preview of the magazine’s Winter Issue, which hit shelves this week, and which contains an essay based on Natasha Trethewey’s Library of Congress speech.
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The Humanity of Hobbits
Are hobbits human? Matthew Yglesias asks this question at Slate and mines J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to find out. The answer is yes; they are just shorter.
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