“After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” You’ve seen the quote on Pinterest and Tumblr, so why not dig a little deeper into Aldous Huxley’s ideas about the transcendent capabilities of music?
Always and Everywhere
Five Rows of Startlingly Empty Chairs
“An easel stood just inside the big glass doorway when I entered the store. On it leaned my author photo, the one from the back cover of Domestic Violets, and it was fucking enormous. It was the size of a photo you’d expect to see if Bono had been appearing at Barnes & Noble, Bill Clinton maybe, or perhaps the Reverend Desmund Tutu. For a full 30 seconds I stood there and looked at the gigantic, painstakingly airbrushed picture of myself. An elderly couple walked in and did a double take when they saw a stunned-looking me looking at me. ‘It’s too big,’ I told them.” This is what you do when no one shows up to your reading.
Slouching Towards Summer
From “A Prayer For Maintaining At Least A Tenuous Hold On My Sanity” to “A Prayer for My Wrecked Bladder,” here are five prayers whispered by a first-year teacher as the school year slouches to a finish.
A New Modesty
Recommended reading: The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the new modesty of literary criticism and the complicated relationship between texts, critics, and politics. For more on the balance between art and politics, look no further than Jonathan Clarke‘s Millions essay, “Alive with Disagreement and Dissent.”
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Interview with Günter Grass
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Cringe-Inducing Books & Growing Up
Two off-site appearances in as many months from our otherwise relatively reclusive editor, C. Max Magee? And both times invoking the theme of lost adolescence? Something’s afoot! Last month, Max dropped by The Morning News‘ booth for the Tournament of Books’ zombie round, and now he’s joining a star-studded cast at The Awl to answer the question, “What Books Make You Cringe To Remember?”
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The Summer Rooster Strikes Back
The second annual Rooster Summer Reading Challenge starts next week with two selections for June: Julián Herbert‘s Tomb Song and Tayari Jones‘s An American Marriage. Get yourself ready with an essay about black love stories featuring Jones’ novel.
Let’s Get 1,000 Feet on War And Peace
Jason Novak, brilliant penman behind last month’s brilliant Panorama of Middlemarch, has followed up that effort with an equally impressive Panorama of “Bartleby, the Scrivener.”
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