Year in Reading alumnus Jonathan Safran Foer and Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman have been exchanging emails for over a decade. Over at The New York Times Magazine, they share their recent correspondence on how things have changed since the beginning of their friendship.
Friends Forever
The Millions on Google+
We recently set up a presence on Google+, and we think you should hop on over to join us.
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LARB talks TNI
Rachel Rosenfelt, Editor in Chief of The New Inquiry, gets interviewed by Evan Kindley, Managing Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. In their conversation, Rosenfelt reveals that TNI's prevailing editorial principle is: "Is this boring? Is this safe? If the answer is yes, then it’s not for us."
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Disgrace
Do you think J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace should be made into a movie starring John Malkovich? Someone does--see the trailer here.
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Appearing Elsewhere
My (very) short story "Pretzel Girl" is up at FiveChapters; it's part of their second annual Infinite Chapters series, wherein a story is posted each day for a little over two weeks. So far, there are stories by Paul Yoon and Jami Attenberg, among others.
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Loss in the Time of War
“War happens when words no longer work. Yet war is declared at the very point when words are at their most powerful. It’s an odd kind of paradox. In a time of war, the familiar words of your own language can become even more significant, as language is linked to the idea of home.” At JSTOR Daily, linguist Chi Luu looks at trauma and language loss.
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Burn Outs and Genre Blindness
Where does the “panic attack when you think you’re not reading enough” fit in to all of this? Here are a few professional readers on how they keep from mixing business with pleasure. This essay on Lewis Lapham and reading just for pleasure might also tickle your fancy.
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Need Not Apply
"It may be vanity on my part ... but I have a fairly high opinion of the two pieces that I sent in." A 68-year-old aspiring writer has accused the Iowa Writers' Workshop of age discrimination, reports The Los Angeles Times. In his complaint, Dan Thomson cites "statistics from the program that reveal that, in the last five years, just over 100 would-be graduate students over the age of 50 applied to the program, but none made the cut." Doesn't he know you don't need an MFA, anyway?
Hilarious. Foer is arguably the worst writer of his generation, but he is unquestionably the most pretentious. Imagine a human being who would do this:
“For the last half a year, we have played a game at dinner called the Wonder Line. If one of the kids can tell me something that generates the experience of wonder — the cocked head, slight nod, raised eyebrow and muttered ‘hmmm …’ — we call it ‘clearing the Wonder Line.”
And then imagine a human being who would be so gol’ darn proud of doing this that he humble-brags about it in the New York Times.
“Imagine a human being who would do this…”
Yes but isn’t it heartwarming when fading propaganda assets come together to generate more… propaganda…? (and *when* is Woody going to put these two adorable kids in a movie…?)