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Bachmann-Celan Overdrive

“We see over and over love meeting pain, silence meeting silence, silence meeting nothing at all.” Elizabeth Bachner reads Ingeborg Bachmann-Paul Celan: Correspondence, letters and gaps spanning 20+ years.

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A talk with Misha Angrist, whose genome is online

My friend Misha Angrist, a former geneticist and the author of Here is a Human Being At the Dawn of Personal Genomics, answers some of my questions about DNA research at The Awl. Holy crap, Misha, you’re making your entire genome public! Are you nervous? It’s already done. All of my data are here. Frankly I don’t think anything in . . .

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Giving grief its own corner

  Talking to Grief Ah, grief, I should not treat you like a homeless dog who comes to the back door for a crust, for a meatless bone. I should trust you. I should coax you into the house and give you your own corner, a worn mat to lie on, your own water dish. You think I don’t know . . .

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Writing as compensation for the things we don’t do

Geoff Dyer’s Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It coasts into and out of asides about the consolations and difficulties of writing, about the many books he started, or thought about starting, on his travels but didn’t finish. “Whenever a publisher asks me what I’m going to do next,” he told John Crace a couple years ago, . . .

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