Infographic of the Week: The Benefits of Reading presented by the National Reading Campaign at Electric Literature. Carolyn Ross, a New Jersey high school teacher, discusses how to make reading more enjoyable for students.
The Benefits of Reading
I think a lot about myself, therefore I am self.
In the Prospect, an essay on anesthesia, 3D printing, teleportation, LSD, and other thought experiments on self-awareness. Also, this line: “If the spectrum of selfhood begins with the roundworm, surely it ends with Proust.”
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Toni Morrison Dies at 88
Novelist of our hearts Toni Morrison died Monday night, her publisher reports, at the age of 88. Morrison won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her best-selling, groundbreaking novel "Beloved," and was the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1993.
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Google Books: Embargo Breaker
At The Washington Post, Craig Fehrman points out that FSG inadvertently broke its own embargo on Jimmy Carter’s White House Diary when a preview of the book showed up on Google Books.
Sun Ra’s Avant Poetics
UbuWeb has posted an excellent collection of avant jazz and poetry from Sun Ra and his famed Arkestra. Much of the suite dates from a 1977 on-air performance in Philadelphia. (Bonus: An excerpt from “At Sun Ra’s Grave” by Jake Adam York.)
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Catching Mr. Harvey
Stephen Moss caught up with AD Harvey, the “independent scholar” who tricked an entire discipline into believing Charles Dickens met Fyodor Dostoevsky. (If you missed Eric Naiman’s initial piece on Harvey’s trail of deception and trickery, you’d do well to acquaint yourself now.)
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Fetishized Frocks
“When she was at Radcliffe, Gertrude Stein always wore black and refused to wear a corset. Samuel Beckett liked Wallabee boots and Aran sweaters and settled on his hairstyle when he was 17.” Proving that author worship is still alive and well, The New York Times reviews a new book called Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore. Come for Mark Twain‘s white suit; stay for Zadie Smith‘s head wraps. Semi-related: how clothing makes the (fictional) woman and man.
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Alas, Poor Everyone
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