This track-by-track take on Jason Isbell’s newest album Something More Than Free is as comprehensive as it is intelligent. Isbell, who rose to fame as a member of Athens, GA mainstays The Drive By Truckers, has seen most of the press narrative around him focus on his trips to rehab and subsequent recovery–this record, however, aims for something more. Here’s our Torch Ballads & Jukebox Music column to satisfy any lingering musical urges.
If It Takes a Lifetime
Scent of a Woman
What happens when a grown woman wears a ton of Axe body spray? The question is nightmare fuel, but Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick -- in what can only be described as a heroic act of journalism -- doused herself in America’s most notorious fragrance for a week to see how it felt.
Photographic Thaw
If you're going to accidentally leave almost two dozen unprocessed photo negatives out for 100 years, there's no better place to store them than a block of ice in Antarctica. Conservationists restoring an Antarctic exploration hut found the negatives left from Robert Falcon Scott's fatal 1910-13 Terre Nova Expedition to the South Pole. For a less harrowing tale of Arctic exploration, check out our review of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
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Sherlock Holmes and the Mysterious Copyright
Sherlock Holmes has solved his greatest mystery yet. It only took 125 years, but Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective is in the public domain. A federal judge has ruled that all Sherlock Holmes stories published before January 1, 1923 are no longer under U.S. copyright law.
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.
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Tuesday New Release Day
Already on shelves ahead of its "official" release date is Mark Twain's long embargoed Autobiography. Also new this week are The Petting Zoo, a posthumously published novel by punk poet Jim Carroll; a new collection of Selected Stories from master of the form William Trevor; Cynthia Ozick's "retelling" of of Henry James’ The Ambassadors, Foreign Bodies; and, in time for election day today, Matt Taibbi's collection of biting political journalism, Griftopia.
The Investigation of Feeling
“I think it’s important that poets exist in societies because they exist in the realm of affect. Feeling is important to them. How people feel, what they feel, what breaks them, how trauma resonates through their lives... that’s a legitimate space in poetry. It’s a legitimate space for investigation.” Aaron Coleman interviews Citizen author Claudia Rankine about intimacy, her writing process, and her experience in an MFA program.
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Ben Marcus’s Language
"Language starts to shut down the strength and power and strangeness of what it means to be a person in the world." At The Rumpus, Ben Marcus discusses how he uses language in his writing and his new short story collection, Leaving the Sea (featured in our 2014 book preview.) Pair with: Our own Adam Boretz's interview with Marcus and our review of The Flame Alphabet.
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