Peggy Orenstein, author of Girls and Sex, writes at Mother Jones about “hotness,” commodification, and women’s bodies.
Barbie Bodies
Happy Birthday, W.C.W.
William Carlos Williams‘s birthday was this last week, and Adam Kirsch writes about the poet for New York Review of Books. Though he argues that “today it would be hard to find a reader of poetry who would not acknowledge William Carlos Williams as one of the major American modernists” Kirsch still has to face the question, “why is it, then, that almost fifty years after his death, the reputation of [Williams] still seems to be haunted by a ghost of uncertainty?”
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Nerd Jeopardy Happened and Our Correspondent Was There
Presenting the second installment of our Tumblr’s newest feature, #LitBeat, which offers coverage of literary events.
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Reviews of Man Booker Longlist
Last week, we provided excerpts for several of the titles on the Man Booker longlist. This week, The New Yorker has helpfully rounded up reviews of the titles.
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The Historic Multitudes of bell hooks
For The New York Times, Min Jin Lee recounts the paradigm-shifting experience of reading bell hooks as a sophomore at Yale.
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Zadie Smith on Charity
“But money is not neutral; it changes everything, including the ability to neutrally judge what people will or will not do for it.” Zadie Smith has a short essay in the New Yorker on the trials of lending money to a friend.