“So Be It! See To It!” So you may have already seen this on the literary internet earlier this year, but today’s Friday, and we needed a little infusion of life: enter Octavia Butler‘s amazingly awesome note to self (via the also amazing and awesome Rose Eveleth).
Our New Mantra
Fiction by Allegra Goodman
Recommended reading: elderly sisters contend with the youngest dying, in a quietly wry new story by Allegra Goodman at the New Yorker. “She pretended to sleep, and then she really did drop off. When she woke, her sisters were hovering over her. Some of us have overstayed our welcome, Jeanne thought. And then, with sudden shock, No: I’m the one. That would be me.”
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A Body Like Mine
The number of options presented to people dating today can be overwhelming and sometimes weird. Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine touches on this subject, posing “questions about wanting and having and bodies and food and sex that often arise in discussions about how people date today.” Natasha Lewis reviews the book in The New Republic.
A Conceit with No Conscience
“[L]ike many, many other rules in the English language, it turns out this one is built on a foundation of lies.” That whole ‘i before e, except after c rule? Bunk. Which you would already know, if you were a true spelling bee hopeful.
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A Writer Away
“War veterans experience something called hypervigilance, a mental state of continual alertness for danger. I have a minor version of this, a writer’s version. For me, danger lies in the sound of a footstep, a spoken word. Anyone could destroy the fragile construction I have to make each day.” Roxana Robinson writes for VQR about the writer’s need for solitude. For more from Robinson, be sure to check out her essay for The Millions on Edith Wharton.
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Steve Almond on Editors, Ambition, and Angry Dependence
Steve Almond at The Rumpus provides a “meditation on editors, ambition, and angry dependence” in reaction to the media’s coverage of the suicide of Kevin Morrissey, managing editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review.
Forty-Four
To mark the end of the Obama years, the crew at n+1 rounded up their best writing from his presidency. Head on over to read Aziz Rana, George Blaustein, and more.
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The Pioneer Detectives on NOOK
Good news NOOK readers: The Pioneer Detectives is now available on the NOOK.