The University of Tennessee will offer history students a seminar on Dolly Parton’s life, so this is as good a time as any to revisit Sherman Alexie’s poem, “Ode to Jolene.”
Dolly Parton’s Song Roars with Need / And Envy
No Bill the Butcher?
If Martin Scorsese develops a TV series based on Gangs of New York but it doesn’t feature Daniel Day-Lewis or Leonardo DiCaprio, will anybody watch it?
Indie History
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“What’s it like to fall in your thirties?”
“I could measure my progress with metrics like number of scabs collected, number of inches ollied,” writes Nick Courage, in his great piece about rediscovering skateboarding in his thirties. “There was an objective truth to the sport; unlike my writing, my powerslides were self-validating.”
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The Long Road
On the occasion of the publication of his novel The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse writes about the decades-long path that got him there and the rules for writing that he devised. (Thanks, Steve)
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Bookless in Laredo
As of last week, Laredo, Texas, a city of 250,000 people has no bookstore. A sign of the coming apocalypse or a great business opportunity? You decide.
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