“No matter who we’re horny to blame for our great national nightmare today, the Washington Post is offering a solution.” The Awl reports that The Washington Post is offering free digital subscriptions for students, the military, and government employers.
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Necesito Oscuridad
“Whenever the latest woe is me commercial came on hawking the newest painkiller, Mami commanded our attention: ‘That’s me!'” Go check out this piece of new fiction, “I Am A Rock,” by Ricardo Nuila at Guernica Magazine.
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Everything I Say
Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt by Kristin Hersh is a downright mesmerizing elegy to the eclectic singer-songwriter. Part idiot-savant, part deliberate curmudgeon , Vic Chesnutt (who Rolling Stone has called one of the greatest songwriters of all time) was notoriously difficult to spend a lot of time around. Hersh stopped by Electric Literature for an interview about the book and about losing her dear friend Vic. Bonus: for anyone unfamiliar with Chesnutt’s work, this video will get you close.
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Elections and All
Recommended Reading: John Williams suggests some reads as we prepare for the presidential primaries.
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City of Asylum
A Pittsburgh-based nonprofit is offering free housing and stipends to “foreign-born scribes who endured imprisonment, or worse, in their home countries.”
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Curiosities: Precise Obfuscation
“Chris Lloyd adores a minuet / the Ballets Russes and crepes suzettes / but Foucault loves to rock n’ roll / a hot dog makes him lose control… what a crazy pair!”James Yeh and a plate of Korean barbecue co-star in: My Dinner with Shteyngart.Deborah Eisenberg reads Wells Tower.Open Letters Monthly looks at Landscape in Concrete, a lost classic from the World War II-era featuring a not-so-ÜbermenschWhat planet are translators from? Paul Verhaeghen spills the beans, in remarks from the PEN festival, (via Three percent)Novelist David Francis, guest-posting at TEV, pits the writer’s interests against those of the publishing industry.W.W. Norton “friends” the Dalkey Archive.Richard Ford tells Nam Le, “Giving a colleague a bad review is like . . . seeing a hitchhiker and rather than picking the hitchhiker up, you run over him.”The Second Pass reappraises Denis Johnson’s 1983 Angels (whose characters reappear in Tree of Smoke).Finally, a piece on Reif Larsen’s T.S. Spivet that doesn’t mention the size of his advance.After only a year, Wyatt Mason’s fine Sentences blog reaches a full stop.An amazing and cute fashion blog from a 13-year-old.The indie bookstore tour writ large: novelist Mark Fitten is visiting 100 indie bookstores and writing about it. (via Maud)Wikipedia find of the week: The Jimmy Carter rabbit incident
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Dr. Seuss and The Very Bad Influence
Add this to the list of incredible things you didn’t know you needed until now. At Quartz, Jenni Avins reads through a selection of hand-typed book reviews, found in the NYPL’s archives, in which librarians tear apart children’s books they find objectionable. Sample quote, from a review of Green Eggs and Ham: “There must be better ways of teaching a child to read than this.”