“I have come to realize how much I have, throughout my life, bought into the narrative of this alluring myth of personal responsibility and excellence. I realize how much I believe that all good things will come if I—if we—just work hard enough.” Year in Reading alum Roxane Gay writes for VQR Online about “The Price of Black Ambition.” Pair with our review of An Untamed State.
The Price of Black Ambition
Two-fer from Kiš
Serbian writer Danilo Kiš, recently profiled by Sam Sacks, has two short pieces up on the Bomb! website.
Growing Up
It’s a common trope in writing courses that young artists need a dose of childlike creativity. Self-help books for people with writer’s block are filled with callbacks to childhood interests. But is it possible, as Tasha Golden argues at the Ploughshares blog, that idealizing children isn’t the answer to our problems?
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Get ‘Em While It’s Hot
Columbia University Press is having a Spring Sale all month. 50% off!
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Very Brief Respites from the Darkness
Want to learn filmmaking from a self-proclaimed “soldier of cinema”? Then sign up for a class with Werner Herzog. The enigmatic director, whose films include Grizzly Man and Fitzcarraldo, announced he’ll be teaching a course in the summer through the online provider Masterclass.
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New Takes on Proust
Add this to the roster of great literary takedowns. Apparently Evelyn Waugh once wrote the following about Proust: “Nobody told me he was a mental defective. He had no sense of time.” (This stands in stark contrast with the views of Aleksandar Hemon, who wrote in a recent Year in Reading piece that Swann’s Way is “one of those miraculous books that gets better with every re-reading.”)
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Aargh!
An analysis of the unsexy history of the word “Argh” with a catalog of its appearance during sexually explicit scenes in 5o Shades of Grey. Cf. Elizabeth Minkle’s Millions essay on 5o Shades and fan fiction.