Recommended Reading: Tim Ellison writes for Ploughshares on Boston’s founding literary figures. Pair with Adam Kelly’s Millions essay on Boston’s geography in Infinite Jest.
Boston Writers
Another Visit from the Goon Squad
Egan. Guernica. Read it.
Social Media Anxiety
Nancy Jo Sales, author of The Bling Ring, talks about her latest book, American Girls, at NPR. “In the 2 1/2 years she spent researching her book, Sales interviewed more than 200 teenage girls around the country about their social media and Internet usage. She says girls face enormous pressures to post ‘hot’ or sexualized photos of themselves online, and she adds that this pressure can make the Internet an unwelcoming environment.” You could also read Sarah Labrie’s essay on social (media) anxiety.
●
●
The Work of a Good Woman
As our own Nick Moran reported two weeks ago, Alice Munro has decided to retire from writing. Herewith, a timely profile of the author, courtesy of the Times. (You could also read Ben Dolnick on her last book of stories, Dear Life.)
●
●
“If it wasn’t signed by some lawyer, I’d imagine ol’ Gentleman Jack penning it himself, twirling his bushy mustache.”
Earlier this month, Jack Daniel's wrote Patrick Wensink a cease-and-desist order because the cover of Wensink's latest novel, Broken Piano For President, bears a striking resemblance to the whisky's logo. Surprisingly, instead of some whisky-soaked tirade, the letter is really, really nice.
“Hunger is the beginning”
"Desire is transformative, and transgressive: whether it’s an unpeeled onion or a noble lover, to want something, especially for women, can never be entirely benign." Kristiana Willsey writes about folktales, fairy godmothers, childless queens and hunger in a piece for The Toast.
●
●
“manuals for a thinking person”
Jed Perl on Susan Sontag's journals: "The fascination of Sontag’s prose—and its sadness—is in the extent to which she is describing herself as a person who can never really get beyond a schematic kind of thinking and feeling."
●
●
Joshua James
If you like your music country/folk-ish with a difference, Joshua James new album Build Me This might be of interest. No Depression, the roots music blog, describes the album as a hybrid of "chain-gang chants, country-fuzz rave-ups, gospel rafter-raisers, southern blues grinds, and civil war camp songs." Try not to be taken aback by the Jared Leto-in-a-mud-mask cover art.