“It’s like a massive piece of denim, and with that denim you can make something really cool. You can make a jacket, you can make some cool jeans, or you can make a cushion or a cover.” When The New York Times decides it wants to define “punk,” you’d better get ready for some cringe-worthy responses. Here’s a Millions piece on Viv Albertine, author of Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys and no stranger to punk rock.
If You Have to Ask
Stiff Manners
It takes a certain skill to link Taipei by Tao Lin, My Struggle Part I and Part II by Karl Ove Knausgaard and an old book on Italian painting in a single essay, but Zadie Smith is (naturally) the writer for the job. In a new piece for The NY Review of Books, she asks the reader to “imagine [a drawing of a corpse] represents an absolute certainty about you, namely, that you will one day be a corpse.”
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In A New York Epoch
Maria Popova investigates Teresa Carpenter’s new anthology, New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009, and includes some wonderful excerpts and photographs.
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A Radical Vision
Recommended reading: this brilliant and thorough profile of Toni Morrison from the New York Times Magazine, complete with a video of Morrison reading from her upcoming novel, God Help the Child.
Sheila Heti on Tove Jansson
Sheila Heti takes a closer look at Tove Jansson, who was best known for creating Moomin, but went on to write fiction that wrestled with ideas of happiness.
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Portrait Book Documentary
Years ago, we wrote about La Porte, Indiana, a nifty book with a connection to Found Magazine chronicling a cache of found photographs from a small town. Now the book is being made into a documentary.
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On Pauline
“It is impossible to ignore the ways in which [Pauline] Kael’s gender makes her a target,” writes Amanda Shubert as she reviews the oft-criticized movie critic, subject of the new book Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark.
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