Archive for February, 2009

The latest from Zoë Heller

Zoë Heller’s The Believers ponders the chasm between those who are fundamentally skeptical and those drawn to systems of belief. See also.

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Florey’s Script & Scribble: on the death of cursive

My current contribution to NPR’s Books We Like is devoted to Kitty Burns Florey’s Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting: At five, teary-eyed, I announced to my mother that I never wanted to grow up, because adults’ handwriting was ugly. When she asked what I meant, I pointed to her signature — a towering and illegible series . . .

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Bookforum’s Cultural Obituaries series to debut 4/9

Bookforum‘s “Cultural Obituaries” discussion series begins at the New York Public Library on April 9, with Making Sense of Black Nationalism in the Obama Era, an event organized around a forthcoming piece by Victor LaValle. Yesterday I asked my friend Chris Lehmann — co-editor of the magazine and a fellow LaValle fan — if he could tell me a little . . .

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Flannery O’Connor was her own monstrous reader

Flannery O’Connor’s famous acceptance-letter rejection might lead you to believe that she tended not to doubt her writing. Brad Gooch’s new biography reveals otherwise. At seventeen, O’Connor was invited to contribute to the high school paper. “‘I don’t know how to write,’ Mary Flannery answered. ‘But I can draw.’” And years later, in the first iteration of her talk, “Some . . .

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