“As I got older, the Nigerian scam artist turned into a meme. The ‘Nigerian prince’ became a joke tossed around by white people with the same ease that ‘Italian mobster’ jokes were likely tossed around in the ‘70s—but aided now by the internet. Whenever I came across casual references to my people as scam artists, I’d wince. There was more to us than the scam. Hell—there was even more to the scam.” On how novelist Teju Cole helped Ijeoma Oluo make peace with the Nigerian scam artist.
Filing Fees and Free Shipping
tl;dr
It’s the last day to vote on panels at SXSW interactive 2013. So if you wanna hear how our editor in chief, C. Max Magee, and our friends Andrew Womack, from The Morning News, and Kevin Nguyen, from The Bygone Bureau, have changed the game with independent long form digital publishing, you better cast your vote today.
Checking Out And Renting
Kindle users can start borrowing e-books from their local libraries. This seems innocuous enough. But what about the proliferation of textbook rentals (e.g. the type on Chegg)? Some believe it may put us on the road to serfdom.
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The Relevance of Plasma
The vigilant excavators at Longform have dug up a fairly old piece, written by the essayist Jo Ann Beard, on a time in her life taken up by cagey dogs, vanishing husbands and the plasma in Saturn’s rings.
A Daisy Chain of Laffs
Turns out David Sedaris loves The Onion (but who doesn’t, really?). Slate asked more than 30 writers including Junot Díaz, Elif Batuman, Paul Beatty, Miranda July, and Chris Kraus to recommend their favorite funny books. Might we recommend you pair this with our own Jacob Lambert‘s comedic interpretation of Cormac McCarthy?
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Let Me Stand Next To Your Cahiers
The NYRB Blog offers a selection from Animalinside, the very cool collaboration between illustrator Max Neumann and the great Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai. Colm Toibin provides an introduction.