“But poems are not poems if they make people feel dead. I want people to feel alive – even if it is alive with grief.” The Guardian profiles poet Danez Smith about poetry; race, gender, and queerness; and their poetry collection, Don’t Call Us Dead (a finalist for the National Book Award). Pair with: an essay on writing that gives shape and depth to victims of criminal injustice.
dear Danez Smith
A Chance for Closure
E. V. De Cleyre explores the right moment to end a nonfiction story. She writes that life rarely offers conclusions, and “dealing with actual occurrences often means there is no definitive end, and even if there were (such as a death), there comes the aftermath—the grief, the coping, the rebuilding.” Pair with Sonya Chung’s Millions essay on literary endings.
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Selfie Sadism
Did David Foster Wallace predict our anxiety over selfies? At The Wire, Danielle Wiener-Bronner argues that Wallace was prescient in Infinite Jest. Although videophony, his concept of video-chatting, isn’t the same thing as a selfie, the paranoia over looking good is strikingly current. “This sort of appearance check was no more resistible than a mirror. But the experience proved almost universally horrifying. People were horrified at how their own faces appeared on a TP screen.”
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Tuesday Links: More LBC, Bookride, Vonnegut
My nominee for this round has been posted at the LBC blog. Though it didn’t grab my cohorts enough to be named our “Read This” pick, I do highly recommend it.I recently happened upon bookride, a blog by a rare book dealer that each day posts about a valuable book, explaining why the book is collectible and why it’s worth what it is. Fascinating stuff. A recent post looks at a rare copy of The Waste Land.Simon at Bloggasm rounded up a bunch tributes to Kurt Vonnegut including a slightly modified version of my post from last week.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Irving; Hijuelos; Eco; Rothschild; Golden; Alarcón; Gaitskill
Out this week: Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving; Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise by Oscar Hijuelos; Numero Zero by Umberto Eco; The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild; Wherever There Is Light by Peter Golden; City of Clowns by Daniel Alarcón; and The Mare by Mary Gaitskill (who we interviewed today). For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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Cheaper New Kindle Has Arrived with a Wi-Fi Option
Amazon has refreshed its line of Kindles once again. The price point on a basic version that utilizes Wi-Fi has dropped way down to $139. Opt for the 3G version and the price is $189. The device now boasts better contrast, less glare in sunlight, and it now comes in a new color: “graphite.”