At Electric Literature, Randa Jarrar discusses her memoir, Love Is an Ex-Country, and the importance of confronting America’s history in order to grow from past mistakes. “A big part of my book is about the amnesia of America,” Jarrar says. “We are constantly at a time where we have to remind each other, ‘This has happened before. It didn’t work. Who is this benefiting?’ We can’t individually make change. We have to make it as a community.”
Randa Jarrar Confronts America’s Amnesia
Version Control
“Arguably versioning is a practice reserved for when a literary translator isn’t available or perhaps doesn’t actually exist who can bridge both languages. At worst, it has and can be done by colonisers or writers from major languages mangling minor literatures for sport and without care from a position of imbedded prejudice, power and authority.” Jen Calleja on the difference between translating and versioning of an original text, over at The Quietus.
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Things to Clear Up
A couple months ago, Melville House published a biography of Roberto Bolaño, constructed from interviews the author gave throughout his life. At Full-Stop, Andrew Mitchell Davenport reads the biography, suggesting that the preponderance of myths about the author “makes elucidating Bolaño’s biography a moral issue.” Pair with: our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s Bolaño syllabus.
Rewarding Attention
At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova meditates on attention and the works of Simone Weil, among them Gravity and Grace. Popova writes that Weil “wrote beautifully of attention as contemplative practice through which we reap the deepest rewards of our humanity.”
Every Love Story Gets a Book Trailer
The book trailer is out for Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, D. T. Max’s biography of David Foster Wallace — it features a brief cameo from yours truly. The book’s opening paragraphs appeared on our site this week, too.
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Revenge of the Pigeons?
Will 2012 be the year they finally rise up against us? A study finds pigeons can do higher math.
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The Peculiar Science of Hating The Beatles
At The Vulture, Nitsuh Abebe explains in seven steps how to do the impossible: convincingly hate The Beatles. It’s not easy, by the looks of it.
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