A Weird Floating Island of Strange Death
I have to say I don’t know what I find more invigoratingly overwhelming: our power to create a weird, floating island of strange death, or art so prescient that it displaces time, distorts causality, and convinces us for a moment that it has killed and buried coincidence.
Reading Tweets From Tahrir, a collection of tweets from the English-speaking vanguard of the Egyptian revolution, I remembered what struck me as so important about the events a few months ago, and why that moment will continue to resonate no matter what road the Arab world takes- young people made change happen, and for a moment, their nation beamed.
Happy 60th Birthday, Jonathan Richman!
Jonathan Richman, one of my favorite singer-songwriters/humans in the world, turns 60 years old today. Happy Birthday, Jonathan! Say hi to Tommy for me! I hope you dance like this today:
In this roundup, writers I love: Pauline Kael, Susan Gillis, Emily Dickinson
Red Lemonade is not just a press; it’s also an online community. All of its books are published online, as well as in print, so users can comment, annotate, and insert marginalia on the texts.
The possibly true last moments of Cosmonaut Vladimir Kamarov
Whilst scanning the endlessly entertaining List of Unusual Deaths a few years ago, I became interested in the life of Vladimir Kamarov, a Cosmonaut whose Soyuz mission ended in disaster when it struck the earth at full-speed in a state of total malfunction.
The roundup returns: with Elif Batuman on literary fame, reading Sontag and Barthes in the digital age, and Jane Eyre. And more!
Alex Shephard on the NBCC blog
Fearless Full Stop leader Alex Shephard–our Editor-in-Chief–is interviewed on Critical Mass, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle.
William Vollmann in Japan’s Restricted Zone
William T. Vollmann, author of Imperial, The Atlas, and several other incredibly intense works of fiction and journalism, ventured into Japan’s “contaminated” zone while covering the fallout of March’s tsunami and resulting nuclear catastrophe.
Bookish (and Birdlike) Events in NYC This Week
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: