Over at Paper Darts, Rachel Charlene Lewis argues that editors must be held accountable for the issue of diversity in publishing. As she explains it, “The fun part about focusing instead on the role of editors is that there is an answer—we need more diverse editors, and we need editors who do the work.”
On Equity in Publishing
Put a Bird on It
Jonathan Franzen spent the first half of his life thinking about literature, now he plans to devote the other half to birds. It looks like Freedom is becoming reality as he puts on his bird-watching binoculars again to discuss the “appalling” songbird hunting in the Mediterranean for National Geographic.
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Get Your Popcorn Ready. The Criterion Collection Hits Hulu Plus.
Looking for something to watch this weekend? Got Hulu Plus? Well, start working your way through the veritable treasure trove that is the Criterion Collection. And don’t worry. If you’re as overwhelmed by the selection as I am, this top ten list by filmmaker Dean Peterson can serve as a great guide. Also, for what it’s worth, I’m partial to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Murakami, Jobs, Nadas, Millet, Kahneman
It’s another huge week for new releases. Happy Murakami day! Haruki Murakami’s long-awaited 1Q84 is finally here – look for our review tomorrow, as is Walter Isaacson’s headline-making biography of Steve Jobs. Also out is another massive and hotly anticipated work in translation (1152 pages!), Hungarian Peter Nadas’s Parallel Stories. Lydia Millet has a new novel out, Ghost Lights, and Thinking, Fast and Slow is set to arrive from Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman.
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Asian Female Characters in the 21st Century
Read this interview with Mary H.K. Choi where she discusses her novel, Emergency Contact, and how it offers a more modern (2010s) portrayal of Asian American mother-daughter relationships. “Choi’s novel blows up Asian female stereotypes and prods readers to question their own cultural biases about women of color. For instance: Not all Asian moms are like Lane Kim’s in “Gilmore Girls.” Not all of them own antique shops or dry cleaners, care singularly about grades and won’t let their baby tiger cubs date until they’ve finished graduate school.”
The New Fiction of Solitude
“If we are now relentlessly connected, every marginal identity gaining collective recognition, becoming assimilated, ever more rapidly? If that is where we stand, then something like a stubbornly solitary voice may be welcome, even necessary, telling us that what it means to be human—and what may keep us human—is to feel alone in a strange room, with our seclusion the thing that defines and can save us.” On bearing witness to the spectacle of aloneness and the fiction of empathy.
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Romeo and Juliet Redux
Considering the sheer volume of references in the cultural air, you probably believe you have a pretty good grasp of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. To this I say, hold up there, Straw Man Reader — Ye Olde Romance That Could has more to it than you think.
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All the Old Showstoppers
Back in the mid-aughts, The New Pornographers were known for having a large number of members with impressive (and exhausting) solo careers. As part of The Rumpus’ Albums of Our Lives feature, Ryan Werner remembers Middle Cyclone by Neko Case.
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Ho-hum, another day, another paint-by-numbers effort urging subpar writers to use identity politics guilt to gain an edge in a tough market. Hey, maybe in the interest of “diversity”, we could occasionally see an essay pointing out all the fallacious aspects of this shallow genre. (Yeah, I know. Fat chance.)
Seems there is going to be a time when we’re going to have to decide what we value more: art or inclusiveness. Submitting your race along with your story is such a sad idea; it’s obviously not ok to use race to reject a story, but it’s okay to use it to accept one? Jesus Christ.
Instead of this kind of ridiculous shit, how about: write better.