If you thought Michel Houellebecq was controversial, let me direct your attention to Kenneth Goldsmith. In this piece, the poet that everyone loves to hate asserts his desire “to take Walter Benjamin off the pedestal and on to the coffee table.” His newest, Capital, is out now.
The Arcades Project
“Cue the 8-bit music”
Recommended Reading: Two poems by S.P. MacIntyre.
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“I see how we are all the same”
Recommended Reading: An excerpt from White Girls by Hilton Als, which will be published this November.
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Literary Insults
This week in book-related infographics: a look at history's greatest literary insults, from Capote to Hemingway to Faulkner.
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National Literary Ambassadors in the New York Times
The New York Times interviews Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and Tracy K. Smith, poet laureate of the United States for National Poetry Month. They discuss black history, bringing poetry to the central and rural parts of the country and to those who are incarcerated and why poetry isn't as popular among adults. "Listening to music and lyrics and watching movies, I think, uses a lot of the same muscles we use in reading and experiencing poetry — and yet we somehow forget that we have those when it comes to sitting down with a book of poems." It's a delight, happy Saturday!
More on Banville
Yesterday I pointed out that John Banville wrote a new Philip Marlowe novel under the pen name Benjamin Black. If you’re a fan of Banville -- and you live in LA -- you can hear him talk about the book this Thursday at Sundance Cinemas.
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An Arrow Pointed to Meaning
Anthony Domestico interviews C. E. Morgan about her second novel, The Sport of Kings, one of the most anticipated books of 2016. As she puts it, “Every aspect of the novel is–or should be—an arrow pointed towards its ultimate meaning, or a multiplicity of possible meanings.”
The Long Birthday
On this day 124 years ago Raymond Chandler, hardest of the hard-boiled, was born. To celebrate the father of Philip Marlowe see these letters Chandler wrote to some of his contemporaries, listen to Chandler's interview with Ian Fleming, and enjoy a couple classic Chandlerisms. Most importantly, read "The Simple Art of Murder," the greatest essay about the mystery novel ever written.
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