“These people may not take you seriously. And your boss might not either. Or your dentist or your best friend from middle school. But you who does take you seriously? Dictators. Dictators take you very seriously. Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Augusto Pinochet, all rounded up writers and artists in short order. They could not afford to have the unpredictability of literature at large while they were trying to create a totalitarian state.” Wendy Willis on subversion through writing for The Rumpus.
Unpredictable Lit
Drawing Autism
April is Autism Awareness Month, and a new paperback edition of Drawing Autism displays artwork created by artists all along the spectrum. You can take a look at some examples over here, and New Yorkers can hear from the book’s editor at the United Nations on April 2nd.
Animated Russian Classics
Polish filmmaker Piotr Dumala spent three years working on his half-hour-long expressionistic adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and the result is a “destructive animation” that’s at once unnerving and beautiful. However in case you’re more pressed for time, you can also get your animated Russian literature fix by checking out Natalia Berezovaya and Svetlana Petrova’s two-minute-long animation for Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.
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The Best Comics of 2013
Want to get rid of some of that holiday money? Timothy Callahan’s list of The Best Comics of 2013 is a good place to start.
St. Crispin’s Day is Here Again
Today is St. Crispin’s Day, a day immortalized in Shakespeare’s Henry V when the title character rallied his British “band of brothers” to face their French adversaries. And according to Guy Patrick Cunningham, “there are lots of ways we can celebrate it.”
Out-of-print Favorites
Used-book search aggregator BookFinder.com has published its annual report on the most sought-after out-of-print books. As always, the lists are eclectic, spanning everything from stock market conspiracy theories to a lost work by Edward Gorey. (Thanks, Laurie)
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PDT Cocktail Book
With New Year's Eve looming, LA Weekly is forgoing their usual cookbook of the week in favor of a cocktail book--The PDT Cocktail Book by Jim Meehan and illustrator Chris Gall, the only beverage book that made it into their Best of 2011 "cookbook" list.
A Young Writer
Recommended reading: Joseph Scapellato summarizes the life of a young writer for Electric Lit. "You are a young writer. Write."
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Kitty Lit
If you find cat hair in a book you checked out of the Novorossiysk Library, don't worry. It belongs to the newest librarian. Kuzya the cat started off as a pet at the Russian library but was promoted after patronage increased due to his presence. The new library assistant even wears a bow tie.
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