“Your opponents would love you to believe that it’s hopeless, that you have no power, that there’s no reason to act, that you can’t win. Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away.” This seems a better time than most to revisit Rebecca Solnit‘s Hope in the Dark, an excerpt of which ran in The Guardian earlier this year. You can also read our review of Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby here.
Keep Hope Alive
Desconocido
Why do Americans read so few translated works? A lot of reasons come to mind, but one is that translated books are often the purview of small publishers, who don’t have the same marketing budgets as the larger companies in the industry. At The New Yorker’s Currency blog, Vauhini Vara looks at the statistics compiled by Three Percent, a database at the University of Rochester that tracks publications of translated works in the country. Related: Oliver Farry’s interview with the Portuguese writer António Lobo Antunes.
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Better To Let It Be
“Notes: Finally, a Pokémon that gets it: the living epitome of the unbearable ennui that characterizes life in the modern age. Despite having the mass of a cement truck, the Snorlax has the calm bearing of a yogi. Its rhythmic snoring chimes the steadfast paternoster of enlightened meditation. This is one Pokémon that truly doesn’t give a shit. One cannot help but feel humbled to be in the face of divinity.” The only thing that could make Pokémon Go any better would be playing it with Anthony Bourdain. At McSweeney’s, Allen Zhang imagines the opportunity.
Leave the Room Buried
Recommended Reading: Robert Macfarlane at The Guardian on what it means to be living in the Anthropocene age–in which human influence on the planet is permanent and profound–and how our writers and artists are responding to the crisis.