Out this week: Time and Time Again by Ben Elton; According to Yes by Dawn French; The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell; and What Is a Garden? by W.S. Merwin.
Tuesday New Release Day: Elton; French; Michell; Merwin
An Interview with Rilke
How would Rilke do in a job interview? Liz Blood took her best guess.
Bad Behavior
Lesley M. M. Blume writes on how Hemingway’s bad behavior came to define his generation. “Hard-drinking, hard-fighting, hard-loving—all for art’s sake.” Pair with this Millions essay on Hemingway’s influence on advertising.
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Read Yourself Civilized
In the latest issue of The Boston Review, Elaine Scarry reviews Steven Pinker’s
The Better Angels of Our Nature. Pinker argues that literature, by bolstering man’s empathy, has lead to huge reductions in worldwide violence, a thesis that sounds dangerously close to the absurd pop-science of Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal.
Sharing the Shelf
Did you join Emma Watson’s feminist book club? Katy Waldman did, and she has some thoughts on the Shared Shelf. We have our own feminist hate-read book club with Nicole Cliffe, Michelle Dean, Roxane Gay, and more.
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Sundog Lit’s Games Issue
Sundog Lit is putting together their first theme issue, and it’s going to be all about “Games” of all types: video games, baseball games, Game of Thrones, etc… Fittingly, their guest editor for this issue will be Level End author Brian Oliu. Submission deadline is June 1st. If you need a little inspiration, you should check out Adrienne LaFrance’s take on MoMA’s video games exhibit.
How They Did It Before Sears
The more you know! In Victorian times, sitting for a photograph could last hours due to primitive camera technology and the need for long, long exposures. This, predictably, didn’t jibe with kids, and so parents had to adopt an ingenious workaround: disguising themselves in the picture so they could physically restrain the youngsters. (Don’t miss Part 2, either.)
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