by Nika Knight

Kevin Brockmeier

w/

What could all that suffering possibly be good for? What if it was beautiful and that’s what it was good for? What if, in fact, our pain was the most beautiful thing about us? What if, moreover, our pain was what made us beautiful to God? What would that say about the world and our place in it?

Bookish (and Birdlike) Events in NYC This Week

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Here you are, looking at the internet. And you wonder, “is there more to life?” The answer is no, not really. There are, however, different things that you can do. Here are a few examples:

Notes on a Non-Scandal

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I sort of want to just throw up my hands and condemn us all, because aren’t we exchanging all these words in the name of feminism? Or are we all just catty bitches?

The Uncoupling – Meg Wolitzer

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Wolitzer’s greatly misunderstood what it’s like to be on and experience the internet, while simultaneously reacting to the medium as it was in about 2003. The depiction of technology and its effect on our relationships is so awkwardly misplaced, it’s hard to move past it.

Insulted by (a lot of) Authors

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The writer Bill Ryan has been going to book readings and requesting that rather than signing his book with a simple inscription, that the authors insult him on the page. He’s recording the results on his blog, insultedbyauthors.com, and he’s gotten some really stellar ones so far:

My Girls

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I found these books and these authors because I needed their voices, although I don’t know that I’ve ever articulated that to myself before. I needed to see women writing other women, women on the page who were strong, thoughtful, harrowingly flawed and courageous in facing and exploring their own selves – if a little batty.

I Would Like to Tell You About Else

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She could often be found roaming the streets of Berlin, dressed in all the jewelry she owned; she never gave the same year of birth more than once. In all ways and at all times, Else resisted definition.

The Illumination – Kevin Brockmeier

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In the end, a world where pain is made of light is one in which pain transcends the bodies that bear it – the light becomes its own phenomenon, it transforms pain into a separate thing of beauty, a glow which commands others’ attention, but not necessarily their sympathy.

Less Unobtainium, More Dance in 3D Films

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Yay! I’m making all kinds of weird cooing noises right now because I love the work of Pina Bausch, the revolutionary former director of Germany’s Tanztheater Wuppertal, and I also have a childhood attachment to Wim Wenders (we were big fans of Wings of Desire in my family, that is probably strange?). I can’t imagine […]

Gryphon – Charles Baxter

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“Baxter’s terminally displaced protagonists explore, with an unabashed seriousness — one at turns childlike and insane — our desire for love.”