The first part of my Culture Diary — chronicling things I read, watched, and did the week before last — is up at The Paris Review Daily. Featured: Muriel Spark, Kingsley Amis, Sam Lipsyte, Damages, Jenny Diski, Jimmy Buffett, Rebecca West, Panir Sabzee, Jonathan Franzen, alcoholic beverages… The silence around here may continue for a little while. I’m unexpectedly in . . .
Oxford American’s fifth annual Best of the South issue includes my ode to Miami’s Biltmore Hotel, which I grew up thinking was haunted and later trespassed in to try to find out. Obviously that’s the hotel, above, and here’s another old South Florida postcard showing a view of the canal. My childhood wasn’t all long afternoons of slow-flowing water and . . .
ThermoPoetics contends that some ideas about nature — and thermodynamics in particular — manifested themselves in literature before being articulated scientifically. (Via.)
This month The Paris Review Daily celebrates one of the magazine’s longtime contributors, Dr. Strangelove scribe Terry Southern.
On June 12, Save NYC Libraries is hosting a We Will Not Be Shushed read-in to support restoration of funding to our local library systems. To get everyone in the spirit, here are some librarians adapting Lady Gaga. (Link swiped from Alison Bechdel.) If you haven’t sent in your postcard yet, now’s the time.