This essay by Mensah Demary for Electric Literature on Nas and the literary legitimacy of hip-hop is the best thing you’ll read this morning. “Nas is a world-class storyteller and practitioner of the narrative form,” Demary writes, “I don’t understand why there isn’t more discussion around hip-hop’s literary value among today’s millennial-and-boomer intelligentsia.”
It Ain’t Hard To Tell
Building Up
It’s fitting that Ray Bradbury credited his interest in architecture to an H.G. Wells story he read when he was five. At The Paris Review Daily, a previously unpublished essay by the author, who says his career in architecture started when he noticed there was no plaque at the residence of Sherlock Holmes. Related: Tanjil Rashid on Bradbury’s connection to the Middle East.
Self-Publishing… With Penguin
Want to be published by Penguin? For $99 (£60), you can! As stated in this Guardian article, “Penguin USA will provide the service through its genre-fiction online community, Book Country, which launched in May offering wannabe authors the opportunity to post their work online and receive feedback.” The news comes on the heels of Amazon’s announcement that Amanda Hocking has become the second self-published author to tally 1,000,000 Kindle sales.
Opiate of the Masses
Regardless of your beliefs, these videos explaining the major theories of religion are a good bet to tickle your fancy. They’re also apropos in light of Pope Benedict’s new book deal.
Junot Díaz Cover Art
Junot Díaz’s forthcoming collection This is How You Lose Her now has cover art. It appears to be video game inspired.
What do Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson, and Abu Ghraib have in common?
Picador’s digital marketing team put together a playful web series for Wayne Koestenbaum‘s Humiliation. John Waters has called the book “the funniest, smartest, most heartbreaking yet powerful book I’ve read in a long time.”
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*Cricket*
“It’s a book about fathers that has few good ones on display. It’s a book about language that cannot decide among many. It’s a book about bargains in which no character makes a wise one.” On Aravind Adiga’s new novel Selection Day.
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Dolly Parton’s Song Roars with Need / And Envy
The University of Tennessee will offer history students a seminar on Dolly Parton’s life, so this is as good a time as any to revisit Sherman Alexie’s poem, “Ode to Jolene.”