For LitHub, Elizabeth McCracken proposes, at last, a unified theory of doughnuts: “Perhaps I cling to doughnuts because doughnuts still exist in the world, though Woolworth’s and Howard Johnson’ses don’t.”
A Unified Theory of Doughnuts
Animals!
Today in things you might like to read about animals: Some birds, apparently, not only mourn their dead but even hold funeral services. And while it’s widely known that the internet is made of cats, Wired dug a little deeper and tried to uncover the root of our collective feline fixation.
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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.)”
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More from Leon Wieseltier
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about this year’s Brandeis commencement, at which New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier argued that the humanities are under siege in America. In this week’s issue of Prospect Magazine, Malcolm Nicholson interviews Wieseltier, who claims that “we live in a culture of worthless praise.”
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Spitting Straight Fire
“You don’t feel that most of the people in these incidents do not like black people, but simply are a product of their white supremacy and are exercising it on you without caution, care, or thought.” Solange Knowles wrote an essay and you need to read it. See also: our review of Wild Hundreds.
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Yang Named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature
On Monday, Gene Luen Yang became the first graphic novelist to be named a National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. We have interviewed Yang and reviewed The Shadow Hero.
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It’s Not “Roses Are Red?”
What’s the most quoted line of poetry? The answer, according to Google and M.H. Forsyth, may surprise you.