Recommended Reading: On queer terminology and writing queer history.
In Today’s Terms
People of the Opposite Sex, Am I Right?
The Atlantic has launched a new section — The Sexes — that deals with issues of gender.
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The Paris Review’s Roundtable
Paris Review editor Lorin Stein sat down alongside James Salter, Mona Simpson, and John Jeremiah Sullivan to discuss the magazine’s sixtieth anniversary with Charlie Rose. At one point Stein admits that, “If you wrote about sex the way Jim [Salter] writes about sex … in nonfiction, you would be a sociopath.” (Bonus: Stein writes about John O’Hara for The New Yorker.)
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Real Life Rosebud
Last month, we got the gossip from Orson Welles. This month, the dirt is about him. His first film, Too Much Johnson, was recently rediscovered in Italy.
Double, Double
“If Nietzsche was right that we need our illusions, I’ll go one further and posit that we need our illusionists: to disprove our eyes, investigate our dreams, and sometimes charm the money from our pockets.” Here’s a fantastic essay from The Rumpus on psychics, love spells, and easy exits.
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Bad Yet Vital
As you may have heard from our own Bill Morris, The Canyons, the new movie starring James Deen and Lindsey Lohan, is a bad film that somehow manages to be worth watching anyway. At the LARB, Naomi Fry agrees with this assessment, arguing that the film is important because it “identifies how desperately many of us still want to believe that the larger-than-life, commodified good life is still available to us.”
Poetry Anonymous
There are a lot of reasons to start writing poetry, but McSweeney’s gives you a list on when to put the pen down. “You were witty that one time while drinking wine at book club” is not an excuse.
Oldest Books
The fine folks at the Vintage and Anchor Tumblr account have compiled a list of the ten oldest books known to man.
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“The Threadbare Art of My Eye”
As Robert Lowell put it: “sometimes everything I write / with the threadbare art of my eye / seems a snapshot.” Poetry and photography.
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