“[C]an we finally be bold and listen to the artists and the outsiders and the radicals and the freaks and the avant-garde and the base and the youth and the anarchists and all those who don’t want to do business as usual with the limousine liberalism of both the elite Democrats and Republicans? Can we listen to the dreamers instead of the doubters?” Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen has some big, important questions in The Los Angeles Times.
Can We Try Something Different
“We love sentences and the people who create them.”
Christopher Newgent set up Vouched as a way to reinvigorate the book selling dynamic. By setting up guerrilla book stores and launching his Vouched Presents series, he’s had some success. You can keep tabs on their Twitter account to see when they’ll stop by your area.
●
●
What’s Your Favorite?
Earlier this week, I told you about a few lists of some really great poetry from 2015. In keeping with the poetic spirit, here’s another fantastic piece from The New York Times in which everyone from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Elena Ferrante talk about their favorite poems of all time.
“What fascinates me are the turning points”
At The Guardian’s website, Hilary Mantel reflects on her second Booker Prize, awarded to the author for her new novel, Bring Up the Bodies. Mantel is the first woman to win the prize more than once.
●
●
Living and Translating is Wearing Me Out
The premier English-language translator of modern Chinese fiction, Howard Goldblatt, says flatly that Western audiences don’t read Chinese books. However, with last year’s Nobel Prize win for Mo Yan (and the rave review his novel Pow! received in the Times), Goldblatt and other scholars are hoping that could change.
No Slight Thing
Recommended Reading: This bizarre little story by Diane Williams as recommended by Deb Olin Unferth at Electric Literature. The story can be found in Williams’ recently published collection of stories Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine.
Science Genius
The Science Genius Initiative is a pilot project organized by Rap Genius, science teachers from ten New York City public schools, and GZA. Together, the group hopes “to change the way city teachers relate to minority students, drawing not just on hip-hop’s rhymes, but also on its social practices and values.” Indeed, as the Wu-Tang Clan emcee – who’s been working with Neil DeGrasse Tyson and MIT physicists for his new album – believes science is worth studying because it “unlocks the key to the universe, and the mysteries we don’t know.”
●
●