For The New York Times, Alexandra Alter writes about girls in titles lately—Emma Cline’s The Girls, Megan Miranda’s All the Missing Girls, and Amy Schumer’s The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, to name a few. Pair with Michael Bourne’s Millions review of The Girls.
Girlhood
Cultural Moments
“It took me ten years (four of writing, six of rewriting) to complete The Listener. Now ‘trans is trending,’ and the book has been published into this particular cultural moment, one I could never have envisioned twelve years ago.” Rachel Basch discusses writing in the context of social change at Lit Hub. Pair with our own Sonya Chung’s piece on literary activism.
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V.S. Naipaul on Writers, Kittens
“The writer is all alone,” Sir Vidia said. “He has only himself—just like a little kitten.” The Atlantic interviews V.S. Naipaul. (via Book Bench)
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A Beginner’s Guide to Drugs For Girls
Tasteless and horrifying–nay, even a sign of the apocalypse–or rather excellent advice for college-bound young ladies? You decide: Vice Magazine‘s “A Beginner’s Guide to Drugs For Girls.” (A taste: “Here are some pointers for the beginners out there so you can get high without becoming that girl slumped in the corner of the night bus with vomit all over your shoes and lockjaw so bad your teeth have all snapped in half.”)
Bo Bartlett’s Winter Digs
“Romatic realist” painter Bo Bartlett, born in Columbus, Georgia, is renowned for his epic tableaus depicting a “Hopper-like sense of longing and mystery combined with a Lynchian-cocktail of menace, beauty, and stranger-than-fiction reality.” He was also a protégé and life-long friend of Andrew Wyeth. In Oxford American‘s most recent SoLost installment, the crew checks out Bartlett’s surprising and endearing winter workspace.
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Round One is In the Books
As round one of the Tournament of Books wraps up, The Morning News offers some statistical analysis as well as some commentary that addresses the competition and controversies thus far. Round two commences next week!
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Crystallized Political Commitments
“Elizabeth Hardwick, a formidable feminist in a different key, declared, ‘I don’t know what happened. She got swept too far. She deliberately made herself ugly and wrote those extreme and ridiculous poems.’” On the (difficult) art and activism of Adrienne Rich.
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Nothing if Not Consistent
Fans of Moby-Dick should read Nathaniel Philbrick’s outstanding historical account In the Heart of the Sea. The book, which tracks the fate of The Essex, a New England whaling vessel sunk by a humongous sperm whale in the South Pacific, is vivid and harrowing. It’s also, as it turns out, only one of the naval catastrophes to befall George Pollard, Jr., The Essex‘s captain: a second wreck of his was recently located off the coast of Hawaii.