“Being someone who’s an outsider, there are so many ways in which the world acts on you or assigns narratives to you.” Literary Hub interviews author Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi about literature, identity, and her new novel, Call Me Zebra. From our archives: Nur Nasreen Ibrahim‘s review of Call Me Zebra.
The Literary Identity
Astaroth, Prince of Hell
Here’s to wishing you a spooky Halloween with this piece by Micah Nathan of The Paris Review. Nathan hearkens back to his boyhood–a much simpler time of casual demon-summoning, Satanism, and the occult. This essay by our own Anne K. Yoder will satisfy any lingering desire for the four Humors.
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“Pixel Dust”
“In the end, no special effects, dazzling displays, augmented realities, or multimodal cross-platform designs substitute for content. Scholarship, good scholarship, the work of a lifetime commitment to working in a field — mapping its references, arguments, scholars, sources, and terrain of discourse — has no substitute.” Johanna Drucker writes about both the importance and the inherent difficulty of scholarly publishing for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Convicts and Classics
Apparently, great books can be life changing: British prisons have begun using a literature course originally developed in the US and including Shakespeare, Dickens, and Steinbeck to help rehabilitate criminals.
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Tales from Swankville
When Pleasanton mom Siah Fried and her co-author wrote Tales from Swankville, a book about hyper-competitive parenting in suburbia, they didn’t expect their neighbors to take it so personally.
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Digital Death
“In its clumsy, ad hoc way, Facebook has brought death back into the public sphere in a way death hasn’t been for more than 100 years.” To celebrate Facebook’s 10th birthday, The Missouri Review has unlocked its Alexander Landfair essay on how we deal with death on Facebook. For another look at Facebook, read our essay on how the timeline changes the way we tell stories.
Yes, Strange
Just when you thought I wouldn’t make you sad about Alan Rickman again, here he is starring in a film adaptation of one of Samuel Beckett’s short plays. In case you missed it last time, these recordings of Rickman reading from Shakespeare, Proust, and Thomas Hardy will surely generate some feelings.
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Thrill Ride
Stephen King’s next book is a thriller set in a Midwestern town suffering from unemployment. Before this sounds a little too close to home, the synopsis reveals it’s about a retired cop trying to stop a mass murderer. Mr. Mercedes will be out June 3rd. Pair with: Our own Lydia Kiesling’s essay on her love of King novels.
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Pimpin’ with Remnick
Correction of the day, courtesy of The New York Times: “He did not say that it would not be a ‘pimped out’ version of the article.”
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