New York Magazine has an excerpt up from Zora Neale Hurston‘s long-lost manuscript, Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo, the first-person account of Cudjo Lewis, the only living survivor of the final slave ship to land in America. Barracoon will finally, 87 years later, be published next week.
87 Years Delayed: New Zora Neale Hurston
Just In Time For Valentine’s Weekend
Katia Grubisic reviews The Poetry of Sex, which is Penguin’s new “carnal compilation” covering everything “from love-making to hay-rolling to cuckolding.”
Everything I Say
Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt by Kristin Hersh is a downright mesmerizing elegy to the eclectic singer-songwriter. Part idiot-savant, part deliberate curmudgeon , Vic Chesnutt (who Rolling Stone has called one of the greatest songwriters of all time) was notoriously difficult to spend a lot of time around. Hersh stopped by Electric Literature for an interview about the book and about losing her dear friend Vic. Bonus: for anyone unfamiliar with Chesnutt’s work, this video will get you close.
●
●
Reactive Female Characters
Melissa Hillman, the artistic director at Berkeley’s Impact Theatre, explains “A Common Problem [She Sees] In Plays By Women Playwrights. (It’s Not What You Think.)”
●
●
Matthiessen’s Beginnings
In memory of Peter Matthiessen, The Missouri Review has unlocked an interview with him from 1989. Matthiessen detailed the beginning of his writing career. “I started my first novel and sent off about four chapters and waited by the post office for praise to roll in, calls from Hollywood, everything. Finally my agent sent me a letter that said ‘Dear Peter, James Fenimore Cooper wrote this a hundred and fifty years ago, only he wrote it better. Yours, Bernice.’ I probably needed that; it was very healthy.” For more Matthiessen, you can read one of his best travel essays or his new novel, In Paradise.
●
●
A Beginner’s Guide to Drugs For Girls
Tasteless and horrifying–nay, even a sign of the apocalypse–or rather excellent advice for college-bound young ladies? You decide: Vice Magazine‘s “A Beginner’s Guide to Drugs For Girls.” (A taste: “Here are some pointers for the beginners out there so you can get high without becoming that girl slumped in the corner of the night bus with vomit all over your shoes and lockjaw so bad your teeth have all snapped in half.”)
●
●
Going Hog Wild with Philipp Meyer
Philipp Meyer is a New Yorker 20-under-40 writer, the author of recession fiction American Rust and the recently released The Son, and a feral hog hunter.
●
●