If you (for some reason) want to know more about Vladimir Putin, you could do worse than reading Masha Gessen’s biography. At The Rumpus, Kevin Thomas reviews the book in a novel medium: a cartoon. (You could also read our interview with Gessen.)
Face/Off
“Against Explanation”
“I don’t know how to give more of myself than a poem. Every poem I write is more accurate than anything I can ever tweet about it: my interior life, and its struggle and desire to converse with the exterior world.” Tarfia Faizullah writes for Poetry‘s blog about why she doesn’t want to explain her poems, the power of breath, and the frustrating implications of the question, “did it happen to you?”
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Letter from Scott Turow
Anyone who cares about the financial viability of the book business should read Author’s Guild President Scott Turow’s open letter on the implications of the government’s threatened anti-trust suit against major publishers and Apple over alleged collusion in e-book pricing.
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Smells Like Teen Dispirit
“I saw it as a breath of fresh dark honest night air. I could live in my grief and be weird in my grief.” A.N. Devers writes about her love of Twin Peaks for Longreads, situating the show within her contemporary experiences of losing her grandparents and her girlhood.
This Is Not Confessional Poetry
Over at the Bennington Review, Michael Dumanis interviews Year in Reading alumna Dorothea Lasky about persona poetry, the first-person “I,” and creativity. Pair with Gila Lyons’s Millions essay on creativity and madness.
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Too Many Books
“My scant respect for the trade to which I belong (from the most ancient of academicians to the most youthful of libelists) derives from a childhood home in which I grew used to mistreating and misusing almost all the seminal texts from the history of culture.” Javier Marias on the dangers of growing up with too many books.
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