Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz on the Metro
Although Mexico City has a literacy rate of ninety percent — one of the highest in Latin America — many people who live there cannot afford to buy books. So, sponsored by Mexico City’s culture department, volunteers are handing out books of short stories to people riding the subway. Despite the city’s high crime rate, [...]
A bird broke forth and sang
The wrought iron gate stolen twenty years ago from Emily Dickinson’s gravesite has been found in an antique shop in Vermont.
My Name is Bill
The Washington Post reviews Susan Cheever’s biography of Bill Wilson, the creator of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Poetry finalists reviewed
The Christian Science Monitor reviews the poetry finalists for the National Book Critics Circle award.
Semicolon a big deal
The Christian Science Monitor’s Ruth Walker discusses the Semicolon That Made Headlines last week:
Last week San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren, reviewing a petition by the Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund to have the court block the issuance of “gender neutral†marriage licenses, complained that the petition was badly drawn up; it [...]
My own computer dream
In solidarity with Maud — a few nights ago I dreamed I got one of those Nigerian emails asking for money. There was an attachment and I stupidly clicked on it. It was a photograph of a tiny man that inexplicably swelled up and turned into a real man who stood beside my chair and [...]
Hetay onlyay atinlay Iay owknay siay igpay
From the Economist, a review of National Lampoon founder Henry Beard’s X-treme Latin: Unleash Your Inner Gladiator:
There are insults here for every occasion, from air rage (Heia, amice, utrum illae sunt sarcinae tuae, an modo Carthaginem despoliasti?, “Hey, pal, is that carry-on luggage or did you just sack Carthage?”) to computer trouble (Assume plicam damnatam, [...]
No aliens, no spaceships
Paul Di Filippo (aka Paoli du Flippi) imagines a new speculative fiction magazine, edited by Jonathan Lethem and Margaret Atwood:
From the wings strode a rather unlikely pair of writers — at least as far as surface appearances went. The elderly Atwood, a regal, conservatively dressed doyenne, and the youthful Lethem, a dead ringer for the [...]
Power of music
In today’s Guardian, DBC Pierre writes about how music saved him.
Literary Dick
In the aftermath of the, um, probing examination of the state of Henry James’ testicles (scorched), Michael Wood and Jonathan Ames have launched the Literary Dick. There Mr. Wood will answer readers’ questions about their favorite literary figures.
Featured today: Did James Joyce have a scatological perversion?
Answers to many other important questions [...]
I swear, this is the first time I can remember dreaming about blogging
Last night I was skipping back and forth between work (for the day job) and this hypertext version of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I’ve mentioned before that it’s my favorite Faulkner novel, but I don’t know whether I said that the Quentin section, with all of its skewed yet enlightening musings about time, [...]
Fan fiction and parodies of it
The latest print issue of World Press Review excerpts an interesting article on fan fiction (focusing on slash), which appeared in The Age in early January:
Slash fiction now arguably forms the bulk of all published fanfic. Slash, it should be noted, is not tatty porn. Much of its coy tone owes more to mid-century bodice-ripper [...]
Sci-fi invention warehouse
Technovelgy is a database of inventions and technological advancements mentioned in science fiction books. Search by writer, text, or category of invention. (Via Waterboro Public Library.)
Web-only comics creators aspire to make transition to print
Lore Sjöberg reports in Wired about San Francisco’s Alternative Press Expo, which hosts three generations of comics creators, including many artists who are currently running web-only comics but aspire to make the jump to print:
New comics artists are attracted to the Web, not only because it allows them to build a fan base, but also [...]
Not to serve so much as to gentrify
Having set up retail shops in approximately every third strip mall in the U.S. suburbs, Borders Books and Music is now opening stores in “one of the retail industry’s few remaining new frontiers,” inner-city areas in major cities like Chicago and Detroit.
keep looking »