Recommended Reading: This jarring, surreal “amalgamation of three different pieces” on Hannah Arendt by Bobbi Lurie over at 3:AM Magazine. Arendt, herself a political theorist, would likely have appreciated this piece from The Millions on the life and afterlife of literary theory.
That Which I Love
“Pointless and trivial.”
“Where, more importantly, is the story? David simply is. He does nothing, desires nothing. He exists, if that, and nothing more.” Shalom Auslander judges the prestigious Three Under Three prize.
●
●
Traveling like Twain
The Mississippi was integral to Mark Twain's fiction, so David Carkeet traced Twain's path on the river in the new issue of Smithsonian. "What would Samuel Clemens have made of the Riverwalk? He was a grown child who readily took a God’s-eye view of life on earth. He would have loved it." Pair with: Our essay on Twain's travel writing.
Describing Art as an Art Form
Recommended: Matthew Monteith's series of photographs showing people explaining artworks.
●
●
The History of the Blurb
What if Petrarch had blurbed The Divine Comedy, or Shakespeare, "author of Tony Award-winning sensation Hamlet," had reviewed Don Quixote? Tom Rachman imagines these blurbs and more for The Rumpus, and his piece pairs well with our brief history of the blurb.
●
●
“That city in the backseat.”
Recommended Reading: Isle of Youth author Laura van den Berg’s story, “Where Will All the Buildings Go?”
●
●
Kartika Review
M. Evelina Galang, author of Her Wild American Self and current director of the University of Miami's MFA Creative Writing Program, is featured in the latest issue of Kartika Review, "a national Asian/Pacific Islander American literary arts journal." You can read the entire Fall 2011 issue for free.
●
●
Sometimes It’s Obvious
Why They're Single is a "tribute site to excellence and failure in online dating." And what better date for it to go live than on Valentine's Day? (Related: OK Stupid: The Horrors of OK Cupid.com)
●
●