“Thus it is our [feminists’] historical task … to define what we call oppression in materialist terms, to make it evident that women are a class, which is to say that the category ‘woman’ as well as the category ‘man’ are political and economic categories, not eternal ones.” This essay in remembrance of Alexis Arquette touches on everything from VIP guest lists to feminist theorist Monique Wittig.
A Liquid State
Raising Children and Writing Books
“Quite possibly I’m a narrower, nastier and less morally responsible writer now than I was the day before my son was born. I certainly hope so.” We know Father’s Day was over a week ago, but here’s a belated link to a refreshingly cliché-free New York Times Bookends piece on parenting and writing, featuring James Parker and Mohsin Hamid.
“You could say that the book [A Sport and a Pastime] is a long poem to provincial France.”
In a video introduced by Paul Yoon, James Salter (who was recently interviewed by our own Sonya Chung) speaks about his time in France and his experience writing A Sport and a Pastime.
●
●
Let’s Not Get Started on the Lightbulb
“Miguel is pulling an all-nighter at the library to finish a history paper. If Miguel’s computer is operating on Microsoft Word 2003, how many useful suggestions does Clippy have between the hours of 8 pm and 3 am?” Introducing Microsoft Word Problems.
●
●
The Trouble With Memoirs
“If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it. Instead hit the delete key, and then go congratulate yourself for having lived a perfectly good, undistinguished life. There’s no shame in that.” Neil Genzlinger at the New York Times lays some ground rules for those compelled to write memoirs.
●
●
Blazing the Path
Pultizer Prize winner for fiction (and Year in Reading alum), Viet Thanh Nguyen, speaks about writers who “blazed the path” ahead of him at The Washington Post. For all of the Pulitzer Prize finalists, head to our comprehensive list.
The Tournament of Books Declares a Winner!
The Tournament of Books declares a winner! It was down to two in the last round: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (called “big, messy, flawed, enraging, and engrossing” by C. Max Magee, one of the final round judges) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad (which “ached with feeling and tension…”) Find out who won at The Morning News!
●
●