“I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices?” New short fiction from Ted Chiang over at Electric Literature (and introduced by Year in Reading alum Karen Jay Fowler)! Pair with our encyclopedic survey of primate lit.
The Great Silence
Not Loving the List
In the Chicago Tribune, Julia Keller explains why all the year-end lists are a tiresome exercise: “What annoys and disappoints me, though, is the chilly retrospective nature of such lists. They drain all of the blood from the critic’s job. They require a cold, methodical calculation of passions long past. They’re about yesterday’s yearning. Compiling them is a bit like trying to remember why you used to be in love with so-and-so.” (Thanks, Laurie)
China Miéville Interviewed by BLDGBLOG
BLDGBLOG, which has “always been interested in learning how novelists see the city,” interviewed China Miéville about “the conceptual origins of the divided city featured in his… award-winning novel The City & The City,” among other things. Architects, fans of urban decay, and general lit nerds are going to have a field day with this link, I promise you.
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Migraine Memories
Writer and illustrator Allyson Hoffman reflects on how chronic illness impacts daily life and memory.
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Calvino’s Other Invisible Cities
William Weaver, Italo Calvino’s longtime translator, writes about the pair’s “complex relationship,” their “consuming passion for words,” and the Cosmicomics author’s travels through “his invisible cities, cities of ideas, or perhaps ideas masquerading as cities.”
Apparently Too Real
“Mario purchased pickup trucks from which he removed panels and lights. The trick was packing the drugs in a part of the vehicle where the body wouldn’t lose its hollow sound when slapped.” These two sentences just got author Dan Slater‘s new book Wolf Boys banned from Texas prisons, inadvertently calling attention to Banned Books Week. Pair with two of our essays about controversial reads.
Weather Advisory
“These are not stories about the weather, these are stories about life and death.” Over at Ploughshares, E.V. De Cleyre considers the weather in contemporary literature.
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A Fresh Set of Obstacles
“As employers cut down on benefits and flexibility, more and more people, especially parents and those with chronic illnesses or disabilities, are getting squeezed out of ‘regular’ workplaces and into the freelance economy. What they find there is a whole new labor market that comes with a fresh set of obstacles—and some benefits, too.” On how companies and labor policy push women toward freelancing.
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