Huzzah! 336 issues of the avant-garde magazine The Storm (1910-1932) have just been digitized and are available for download. Some notable contributors to The Storm included Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and many others.
Calm Before the Storm
The Toast & The Butter
The Toast announced their first vertical this week, and even better than its name (The Butter, of course) is its editor – Roxane Gay, darling of the literary internet and author of Bad Feminist and An Untamed State. In answer to the question “What will this particular vertical be like?” Toast editor Mallory Ortberg said “WHATEVER ROXANE WANTS IT TO BE,” so we have a lot to look forward to. Pair with The Millions’s review of An Untamed State and Gay’s 2013 “A Year in Reading.”
Tuesday New Release Day: Wilson; Ackerman; Barry; Barkan; Krivak; Coe
Out this week: Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson; Dark at the Crossing by Eliot Ackerman; Days Without End by Sebastian Barry; Mexico by Josh Barkan; The Signal Flame by Andrew Krivak; and Number 11 by Jonathan Coe. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
●
●
“You are saying you do not exist in the American dream except as a nightmare.”
Make some time this weekend to read James Baldwin and Audre Lorde in conversation, which originally appeared in a 1984 issue of Essence, but has since been reposted by the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts.
●
●
Consider the Tetrapod
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the “Albums of Our Lives” series over at The Rumpus. This week finds Ray Shea taking a look at The Mountain Goats’ The Sunset Tree.
●
●
Early Bafflings
Yet another open archive for your summer reading enjoyment: the Baffler (“the Journal that Blunts the Cutting Edge”), as part of a website redesign, has made available its entire back catalog of commentary and fiction. Might I suggest starting with this now-charmingly-antiquated piece on marketing to the youthful “hipster” generation? (The Paris Review has other suggestions. It’s hard to go wrong.)
●
●
UC Press suspends New California Poetry series
Alison Mudditt, director of The University of California Press, has announced the suspension of the New California Poetry series due to state budget cuts and the challenges posed to “our industry and markets which (not unlike the newspaper industry!) require us to rethink and retool to remain a vibrant and relevant voice in the digital age.”
●
●
Louise Erdrich: The Paris Review Interview
“By having children, I’ve both sabotaged and saved myself as a writer… Many of the writers I love most were alcoholics. I’ve made my choice, I sometimes think: Wonderful children instead of hard liquor.” The Paris Review interviews Louise Erdrich for its Winter issue.
●
●