Jim Harrison passed away yesterday at the ripe old age of 78, and there’s no better way to honor his memory (and get acquainted with his work) than to take a moment to sit down with these seven fantastic poems from his last collection, Dead Man’s Float.
Where In The World Are You?
DFW Roundup
From the person who brought you Infinite Boston comes Infinite Atlas, an interactive map of the places that make up Infinite Jest, and, for the truely devoted, the Infinite Map, a framable print version of that atlas. Page-Turner offers an extended preview of D.T. Max's Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story. Maria Popova highlights a few of the signature DFW words that he adopted from his mother.
Straightening Up the Files
“Mom would meet up with us in the museum, take us to study Impressionist or Modern art. It always made me want to puke, but we did it every weekend for over a year.” Smithsonian Magazine has a lovely piece about the story behind the children's classic From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, including lots of anecdotes from author E.L. Konigsburg's kids.
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“Go Read Alice”
The diary novel may be "an under-attended" genre, but Johannah King-Slutzky is trying to remedy that. In an essay for The Hairpin she traces the diary novel's history from the Victorian era to Go Ask Alice while examining the genre's balance of "melodrama and awkward moralizing" with the potential for subversion.
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Innovations in Multi-Tasking
The "Laptop Steering Wheel Desk" seems like a really bad idea. Then again, better that anyone inclined to use a computer while driving have a desk to put it on.
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Jesse Eisenberg’s Brain
Recommended Reading: Jesse Eisenberg's stream of conscious New Yorker short story, "A Short Story Written With Thought-to-Text Technology." "When he was younger he used to stay late after school on Fridays and come in early on Mondays, a pattern his mother referred to with equal parts admiration and disdain as 'studying overtime.' Jesus, I’ve written another loser."
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“Soccer is inextricably tied to nationalism”
Among Jorge Luis Borges’s observations about soccer were the following: “Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular;” soccer is “aesthetically ugly;” and “soccer is one of England’s biggest crimes.” That is to say: his distaste is well documented. But why did he feel this way? Millions contributor Shaj Mathew takes a look.
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Jason Epstein on How Publishing Works
"Far more than any other medium, books contain civilizations, the ongoing conversation between present and past. Without this conversation we are lost. But books are also a business...." Jason Epstein explains how publishing works—and why, increasingly, it doesn’t, at the New York Review of Books. (via)
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