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
Artistic Dachshunds
On the NY Daily News' Page Views blog, Alexander Nazaryan writes about the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show's most neglected -- yet also most literary -- member breed: the dachshund. "No dog," Nazaryan writes, "has been more widely loved by writers and artists than the dachshund." Comedian Streeter Seidell agrees that the dachshund was slighted, and calls for a "fan favorite" award next year.
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Required Reading
What are college freshman reading? NPR shares a few selections from around the country. A recent study found that "The list of readings continues to be dominated by recent, trendy, and intellectually unchallenging books." Our own Nick Ripatrazone writes about the difference between teaching high school and college students.
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The Great (Literary) Depression
"Ageists who want to fault millennials for the continual decline in literary reading are wrong to do so. Across the board, there wasn’t much considerable variation in the amount literature age groups read. Everyone is hanging out in the 39–49% range." Is America in the midst of a literary recession? According to the National Endowment for the Arts, 2015 marked the first year in 33 cycles of research that the percentage of adults who read literature had dropped below 45% to a dismal 43%.
Tuesday New Release Day: Agee; Mann; Cowley; Virgil; Szybist
Out this week: The Complete Journalism of James Agee; Straight Razor by Randall Mann; The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley; The Virgil Encyclopedia; and a new e-book edition of Incarnadine, the poetry collection by Mary Szybist that won this year’s National Book Award.
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Theory of Blog Posts
Over at HTMLGiant, A D Jameson offers summary and analysis of Viktor Shklovsky’s literary theory. The piece then invited some additional words from Helen Stuhr-Rommereim.
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I’d Prefer the Footnotes
Recommended Reading: This slick, new, annotated version of Herman Melville’s classic Bartleby, the Scrivener from the folks over at Slate. For more on Bartleby’s occupation of Wall Street, here's a piece that should suffice.
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Branching Out
Is it possible to read fiction by an actor without thinking of them as the character that made them famous? It’s a question many people asked when reading James Franco, and it’s a question they’re likely to ask again when reading One More Thing, a new book of short stories by The Office star B. J. Novak. At Open Letters Monthly, Justin Hickey reviews Novak's collection.
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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.