People take from fiction the same comfort and soothing feeling of being understood that, I think, also powers a lot of con and forgery. One reason you would answer the Nigerian email is that you want the money. The other reason is because, wow, this is a story I could be a part of: I helped this poor widow of the assassinated oil minister.
Happy 6 Month Anniversary, Full Stop!
We’re going to party like it’s our 6 month anniversary, sip Bacardi like it’s our 6 month anniversary.
Full Stop Recommends: Bill Callahan’s guitar-plucking, Wright Thompson’s sports writing, Wikipedia’s Victorian factoids, Ingmar Bergman’s film-making, and Breaking Bad’s American Dream.
We need novels forged in the black fire of despair – personal despair, political despair, even cosmic despair. Novels shot through with a sense that the end is nigh, that all our efforts are in vain, but that we might at least laugh at our predicament. Laugh – but with a laughter as black as the forces that we laugh at.
You’ve read the books. You’ve watched the films. Maybe you’ve played the drinking games that go with those films (and perhaps you’ve discovered that the narratives offered by those films aren’t so accurate after all.) What next?
Last Thursday Haruki Murakami was awarded the International Catalunya Prize at a ceremony in Barcelona. In his acceptance speech, Murakami delivered a harsh critique of his country’s reliance on nuclear power.
Téa Obreht is the Youngest Ever Winner of the Orange Prize
I’ve been pretty critical of the “look how young she is!” narrative — it’s condescending and irrelevant — but I’ll put that aside for the moment. She’s young! Her agent’s young! Her editor’s young! Youth movement!
Deleted Scenes is a way to feature interesting parts of interviews didn’t make the cut. In this installment Capitalist Realism author Mark Fisher talks about “market Stalinism,” unheralded writers, bureaucracy, and student protests.
Poor Yorick Entertainment promises to “attempt to bring some kind of visual life to the fictional filmmaker’s [James O. Incandenza] body of work, as well as the world of Infinite Jest.”