“What I’ve found is that a lot of soldiers are surprisingly apolitical. Their reality is, ‘Today I’m going to leave the gate for twelve hours, and I’m going to make it back to the dining facility by sundown with the arms and legs of me and my buddies intact.’ So you say, ‘Well, what about the Project for the New American Century and the preexisting agenda blah blah blah?’ They go, ‘Yeah, that’s cool, but I have to get through today.’ So their reality is not a political reality as much as it’s, ‘If I’m driving by this piece of garbage, will it blow up?'” Revisit this old interview with Henry Rollins over at Guernica Magazine, which manages the nearly impossible: to be both level-headed and political.
Can a Song Stop a War?
The Wright Kind of Mess
In her review of Joe Wright’s cinematic adaptation for Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Amanda Shubert writes, “Anna Karenina (2012) is, in fact, a mess. But it’s the kind of mess probably only Wright could make.” She goes on to look at how Wright has adapted work by Jane Austen and Ian McEwan, and how he has continued to face the problem of representing literary style (and form) on the screen.
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Lipsyte Interviewed
Fiction Daily has added a give and take with The Ask author Sam Lipsyte to its growing collection of author interviews.
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Grappling with Language
“Aposiopesis: To cut short a trash-talking opponent mid-taunt by suplexing him. Can also be used in political debates.” Matt Seidel walks readers through a glossary of rhetorical wrestling terms.
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The Best Web Publications Are Also The Youngest
Between the 40 Towns project organized by Jeff Sharlet’s Dartmouth students and the newly unveiled Vanishing Point project from Duncan Murrell’s students at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, it seems abundantly clear that college students are better at putting together web publications than 99% of established publishing outfits. Begin your tour with Christine Delp’s look at a blind man who makes his own martinis, and then check out other stories such as Ge Jin’s photographic essay on Chinese university students.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Haddon, Walter, Lanchester, Tóibín, Ondaatje
New this week are Mark Haddon’s The Red House, Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins, John Lanchester’s Capital, and a collection of essays from Colm Tóibín, New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families. Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table is now out in paperback.
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Isabel Allende on Engaging With the World at Any Age
Isabel Allende discusses her new memoir, The Soul of a Woman, and how she finds value at every stage of her life.
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Love Letter to Technology
The last book that Michelle Vider loved was our own Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, which was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award. Claire Cameron’s interview with Mandel from The Millions is a nice complement.
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