I read a lot of great stuff online this week.  Check it out.

n+1’s recent editorial “Revolt of the Elites” argues that “it’s educated language and egalitarian ideas that particularly elicit the accusation of elitism today… The elitism charge mostly exempts those who’ve been to expensive colleges so long as they’ve only learned how to make money there.”  Sharp analysis, fierce vindication.

In the London Review of Books, Slavoj Žižek’s reading of the WikiLeaks phenomenon as a threat not to powerful people but to the structure of power: “The only surprising thing about the WikiLeaks revelations is that they contain no surprises.  Didn’t we learn exactly what we expected to learn?  The real disturbance was at the level of appearances: we can no longer pretend we don’t know what everyone know we know.”  Also, Christopher Tayler reviews Elif Batuman’s new book The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, with a fine sense for her humor and wit.

On the radio: the BBC plays old David Foster Wallace interviews and gives advance praise for The Pale King, and the inimitable Terry Gross interviews Stephanie Coontz on Fresh Air about her new book about The Feminine Mystique.

Lastly: Doodles by famous authors! Shakespeare’s stolen foliosParavion Press prints stories on postcards, and the Paris Review serializes Robert Bolaño.


 
 
Become a Patron!

This post may contain affiliate links.