“It’s part of Jane Austen’s genius that she can bring the maximum of drama and momentousness to the most minimal of occasions.” Here is David Denby from The New Yorker on reading (and listening to) Austen’s Emma, which is celebrating its two-hundredth year in print. We’ve brought you a bunch of bits on Austen in the past.
For Jane, Forever Ago
A Fake News Site Makes Fake Fake News. You Won’t Stop Laughing At What Happens Next
Courtesy of fake-news juggernaut The Onion, a new viral website honest about its purpose: “I think we see the ideal ClickHole reader as a hollow shell who exists purely to click on our content and then share that content with other hollow shells.” (Also: the same technique on headlines, applied to books.)
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Joyce and Carroll
“But reading Finnegans Wake is more than a matter of collecting one’s favorite quotations – even if there is a huge pleasure in that, especially if you admire truly terrible jokes.” Michael Wood writes an essay on James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, and the origins of clever wordplay for the London Review of Books.
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Looking Outside
Recommended Reading: Tasha Golden on the Lone Genius myth.
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Point and Click
Recommended Reading: Owen Hatherley at the London Review of Books discusses postcapitalism and a world run by clicks: “The sin of ‘original research?’ – a solecism nearly as grave as ‘citation needed’ – is another reminder that the non-postcapitalist labour of academics is the basis of nearly the entire operation. Wikipedia is less a new form of knowledge than a novel packaging of an old one.”
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Boyhood
Over at The Rumpus, Brian Gresko argues that every writer, even cis men, should be openly discussing the complications of gender. As he puts it “Self-censorship is a twisted birthright passed down to boys by their fathers.”
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“Let us not desert one another”
In honor of Jane Austen’s recent birthday: five feminist lessons, culled from her body of work.
My Neighbor, the Poet Laureate
Poets & Writers magazine has posted my interview with my Brooklyn neighbor and U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine, along with a lovely recording of him reading his poem “The Mercy.” It’s worth a listen.
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