For the 25th anniversary of Howard Cruse‘s powerful graphic novel, Stuck Rubber Baby, (which you can read an excerpt of here) Alison Bechdel reflects on Cruse’s impressive portrayal of his place in history. “Stuck Rubber Baby is a story, but it’s also a history—or perhaps more accurately a story about how history happens, one person at a time,” Bechdel writes. “What does it take to transcend our isolation and our particular internalized oppressions to touch—and change—the outside world? As Toland Polk begins to engage truthfully with his inner self, his outer self is able to connect with others more authentically and powerfully. Actually, it’s just as accurate to put this the other way around, because those two actions are inextricable from one another.”
Alison Bechdel on Howard Cruse’s Landmark Queer Graphic Novel
In the End, Everything Turns Out / Right”
Recommended Reading: “An Old Man, Full of Days” by Matthew Minicucci.
A Room of Her Own
Recommended Listening: Sandra Cisneros on moving into her first apartment and finding a room of her own.
Science and literature
Why do we love fiction? The New York Times examines the links between science and literature: “It’s not that evolution gives us insight into fiction … but that fiction gives us insight into evolution.”
“Well most people don’t go to the Olympics!”
Millions alumna Rachel Hurn had the honor of interviewing Swimming Studies author Leanne Sharpton for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
More Anxiety
Harold Bloom turns eighty-five this year, which makes it all the more impressive that his forty-fifth book, The Daemon Knows, comes out this week. At Vulture, Amy Bloom (no relation) has tea and scones with the Yale professor, who talks about Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and why a critic called his new book “an invectorium.” You could also read Matt Hanson on his last volume of criticism.
Reading Poetry
“The very best way to read a poem is perhaps to be young, intelligent, and slightly drunk.” The Atlantic offers 20 strategies for reading poetry, and they pair well with Leah Falk‘s look at “Performance Anxiety: When Poets Read Aloud.”
On The Making of The Blues Brothers
“‘We had a budget in the movie for cocaine for night shoots,’ [Dan] Aykroyd says.”