“If I’d stayed, I could have protected him. That’s what I believed. Maybe he believed that, too.” Over at Catapult, Chris J. Rice writes beautifully and harrowingly about finding her long-lost brother after decades.
The Traumas We Carry
Bad Feminist, Good Quiche
After the Times Magazine published their interview with Roxane Gay — in which the Bad Feminist author and Year in Reading alum delves into the title of her latest book and talks about her love of Sweet Valley High — the crew at McSweeney’s dug up a humor piece the author published in 2010. If you can read the title without laughing, you are more stoic than I am: “I Am Going to Cook a Quiche in My Easy-Bake Oven and You Are Going to Like It.”
Hart Crane: Remix Artist
“Samuel Greenberg belongs in the pantheon of literary manqués,” writes Jacob Silverman. The poet was a favorite of Hart Crane, who described him as “a Rimbaud in embryo.” But did Crane take his adoration too far? Did he in fact “remix,” re-purpose, or plagiarize some of Greenberg’s work?
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More Than Light
“Romance heroines hold jobs. They teach, farm, practice law, work independently as private detectives, or they are involved in the arts, in dance, in theater. They are mothers, ex-wives, Marines. They take up causes and they always want something ‘more’ from their lives—and we aren’t just talking about a partner. In today’s romance, the relationship is part of—and often, a catalyst for—a woman’s journey, not her destination.” On the value of romance fiction.
Au Revoir, Harry
While we’re on the subject of Harry Potter, I have some bad news. According to J.K. Rowling herself, Cursed Child is likely the last we’ll ever see of the boy (now middle-aged) wizard: “He goes on a very big journey during these two plays and then, yeah, I think we’re done. This is the next generation, you know … So, I’m thrilled to see it realized so beautifully but, no, Harry is done now.”
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Early Birds
If you’ve ever wondered how old your favorite authors were when they hit their creative peaks, you’ll enjoy this graphic, which charts the ages at which well-known writers published their most famous works.
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