“When watching [Abbas] Kiarostami films, one also has a great sense of another kind of freedom not found in Hollywood movies, nor in most European art films: freedom from the creeping realization that a film we are watching was made by a cynical shit or a self-deluded megalomaniac.” Here’s something you don’t see every day — an essay that begins with an Independence Day showing of The Purge: Election Year, and somehow ends up at a poetic examination of Kiarostami’s artistic legacy.
A Quality of Immortality
Unorthodox Taxidermy
Fans of Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, often know that he had an earlier career as an ad agency illustrator, but how many of them know he was also an amateur taxidermist? "His father, superintendent of parks in Springfield, Mass., occasionally sent him antlers, bills and horns from deceased zoo animals," reports NPR, elements that Geisel then integrated into fantastical wall sculptures.
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Take Your Vitamins
Did Gollum have a vitamin D deficiency? In the Medical Journal of Australia, Joseph A. Hopkinson and Nicholas S. Hopkinson posit that the Lord of the Rings saga could've been prevented had the inhabitants of Middle Earth just gotten a little more sunlight. "Systematic textual analysis of The Hobbit supports our initial hypothesis that the triumph of good over evil may be assisted to some extent by the poor diet and lack of sunlight experienced by the evil characters."
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Haiti: A Love Poem
Our friend Nelly Lambert, who spent several years in Haiti growing up, offers the country a love poem.
“A blood-sworn fan”
“So much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it’s more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum. To oppose them, to suggest that one category excludes the other, always feels bogus to me.” Talking with Karen Russell.
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Who Wrote It First
Nabokov fans, brace yourselves! Nabokov scholar Michael Maar accuses the author of stealing the premise of Lolita from another writer. Pair with this Millions essay about designing the cover of the book.
Tigers on Your Tablet
"Calvin and Hobbes" is going from print to digital. Now, you can read the strip of the boy and his famous tiger as a series of e-books: The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, and The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes.
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Guinea Pig, Actual Pig
Recommended Reading: Maria Russo’s Times review of the new Dr. Seuss book. (If you haven't yet, go check out Michiko Kakutani's companion review-in-verse.