“Millennials are so frequently hyped as the first digital generation that people tend to forget that we were raised first and foremost with books. TV and the Internet may have shaped our identities, but so did old-fashioned, printed stories.” Everybody is tired of the word “millennial,” but this piece makes some great points about Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad series and how it taught children to understand and appreciate their individuality.
Frog and Toad Are Friends
The Complete Spy Magazine, Now Online
Like a time machine to the first Bush Administration, the complete archives of the late, lamented, and hugely influential Spy Magazine are now apparently available through Google Books (via). We’d offer a few keywords to get you started, but the riches are too many. Okay, fine. You twisted our collective arm. Ivana Trump. Henry Kissinger. O.J. Celebrity Pro-Am Ironman Nightlife Decathalon. Go nuts.
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Even More DFW
In honor of this weekend’s U.S. Open, Grantland‘s Michael MacCambridge is revisiting David Foster Wallace‘s epic essay on Roger Federer.
The Private, Intimate Sphere
Read Karl Ove Knausgaard’s acceptance speech for the Welt Literaturpreis, an annual prize awarded by the German newspaper Die Welt, at The New Yorker. He writes, “The difference between engaging with a real neighbor and one in a novel is that the former occurs in the social sphere, within the boundaries of its rules and practical constraints, whereas the latter occurs outside of it, in the reader’s own most private, intimate sphere, where the rules that govern our social interaction do not apply and its practical constraints do not exist.” You could also check out Knausgaard’s book excerpt at The Millions.
The Social Function of the Novel
Recommended reading: Tim Parks asks “what is the social function of the novel?“
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If Nobel Laureates Wrote for Home Depot
The Paris Review presents a spread of paint chips “sourced from the colors in literature.”
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