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From Stephen Elliott
It has a provocative headline (“Literary fiction is boring!”), but J. Robert Lennon’s Salon piece about what writers should read is not nearly as simplistic or sensationalist as you might expect.
Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, he does make some good points.
...moreA grim reminder of one of the reasons we still need things like International Women’s Day: the suggestion that men should take responsibility for not raping women is apparently outrageous.
At Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams tells the story of Zerlina Maxwell, who appeared on Sean Hannity’s show to say, “If you train men not to grow up to become rapists, you prevent rape.” The sadly predictable result: “I can’t even go on my Facebook page,” says Maxwell.
...more“I celebrated my tits with him, with all of these people. Hot bras, clingy T-shirts, sexy lingerie shopping forays. Must I abandon celebrating my tits in order to avoid mourning their loss? To find partners who won’t?”
Take a look at Rumpus contributor Anna March’s vulnerable and humorous piece on the plight of her breasts at Salon.
...moreSylvia Plath may not be best known for her paper dolls, but we don’t usually envision Mark Twain as an avid fan of scrapbooking, either.
Check out this cool collection of the artwork of famous authors, which also includes William Burroughs’s gunshot paintings and Charles Bukowski’s watercolors.
...moreIn a thought-provoking Daily Beast essay about Daniel Tosh’s “rape joke” at the Laugh Factory, Rumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist clarifies the distinction between using humor “to cope or to point out the absurdity of a situation” and making a joke to humiliate, threaten, or assert power over another person.
...more“In the end nothing matters but the work. You can’t control how it’s taken, and the act of telling a story always involves a gap. Sometimes confusion is the risk of ambiguity–I say that to students all the time.”
The New York Times published an entire review of Patrick Somerville’s This Bright River having mixed up the identities of two characters within the first five pages of the book.
...moreAt Salon, Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay writes about the cheering of Sandusky’s guilty verdict, and our spectacle-centric culture.
“The pictures are the story. The videos are the story. The confession of a broken man is the story. The protective father is the story.
...more“Many men who turn to submissive fantasies do so for precisely the sort of vacation from responsibility that Roiphe suggests women are seeking.”
At Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory gathers the input of professional dominatrixes to shed light on male desire for submission, which was glaringly absent in Kaite Roiphe’s Fifty Shades of Grey.
...moreWhy was fiction snubbed? Laura Miller, who has served on the Pulitzer fiction jury, offers some thoughts on this year’s decision (or lack thereof) at Salon.
“By all accounts, the group could not reach a majority on any of the three titles recommended by the jury.
...moreAt Salon, David Daley argues that “Jonathan Franzen and the Web will never get along.” Daly points us to an anecdote in Franzen’s “On Autobiographical Fiction” in contending that both the author and his critics are misinterpreting and talking past each other.
...moreRumpus contributor Daniel Roberts has two pieces on David Foster Wallace in honor of what would have been his 50th birthday. This Berfois essay examines The Marriage Plot‘s Leonard Bankhead character as a representation of DFW. And, at Salon, Roberts asks us to consider Wallace’s journalism.
...moreSalon columnist Cary Tennis praised Sugar, whose column he called “brilliant and affecting.” The appreciation is mutual; Sugar recently listed Tennis as one of her favorite advice columnists. With all this love going around it’s fitting that Valentine’s Day is Sugar’s coming out party.
...moreSalon converses with David Lynch about his new album Crazy Clown Time. The director discusses transcendental meditation, his attraction to sound, and finding humor in the disturbing.
“When you get something that’s thrilling, if it’s working on a couple of different levels, it’s more thrilling.
...moreThe New York Times dissects the advent of the novel to television adaptation with a focus on Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. Craig Fehram breaks down the differences between television and movie adaptations in arguing that “where a movie means paring a novel down, a TV show can mean breaking it wide open.”
In an earlier essay at Salon, Laura Miller also took on the novel-TV marriage, asserting “while not exactly soul mates,” the two “have a lot more in common than the novel and theatrical film.”
(Via Vintage and Anchor)
...moreSalon kicked off a new column called Dream City with an exploration of how “cities of the future” are being designed.
“…The inescapable truth is that the new urban reality we’ve created — the one with spiffed-up boulevards and cutting-edge transit and high-design parks and bike lanes and BeltLines — is more expensive than the one that existed before.
...moreWant to know what Fox News is saying about OWS without having to actually expose yourself to their coverage? Salon‘s Alex Pareene spent two days watching the most “fair and balanced” news station and gives us a break down.
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In 1995, a small group of writers and editors met to plan Salon. Laura Miller, who became employee number 5, was involved in creating the prototype.
This Salon piece offers a compelling argument for why teens should read adult fiction and reminds us that exposure to “mature” themes in adolescence is not only survivable, but also essential to “moral development.”
“They’re equipped with a strength and ingenuity they’re not often enough credited with. Life’s genesis and termination — and every gradation of human experience in between — is their birthright.
...moreDoes the rise of new technology, specifically auto-translate, signal the death of human translation and multilingualism? David Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything, thinks not. Check out his reasoning in this interview, which touches on the methodology of Google Translate, vehicular languages, and multilingualism in America.
...moreThe past decade has ushered in e-books and e-readers, so why did hypertext fiction stall after its initial hype in the 90s? This article investigates that question, building a case for renewed vows between hypertext and novel.
“Just as the novel taught us how to be individuals, 300 years ago, by giving us a space in which to be alone, but not too alone — a space in which to be alone with a book — so hypertext fiction may let us try on new, non-linear identities, without dissolving us entirely into the web.
...more“Please don’t let it be a Muslim or Pakistani dude. Please don’t let it be a Muslim or Pakistani dude.”
Over at Salon, Wajahat Ali tells us what goes through his head every time terrorism comes to the US and gives us his thoughts on Faisal Shahzad, the guy behind the unsuccessful Times Square car bomb.
...moreElissa Bassist, editor/curator of The Rumpus’s Funny Women series (submission guidelines here) is a new contributor to Salon’s Broadsheet. Her first offering is titled “Sleep Your Way to a Book Deal.” Here’s a taste:
...moreAs a young writer, I dream of one day writing the next great American memoir.
Salon laid off six of its 29 editorial staffers last week in an effort–according to CEO Richard Gingras’ statement to Gawker–to become “more of a true Web publication.” According to Gingras, the layoffs are tied to a fall relaunch of the site and a redesign of its backend CMS.
Toilet-shaped plates with food presented as excrement. Sweet!
Ever find yourself at a diner at three in the morning, the drunk hungries kicking your ass and your waffle/hash brown/extra bacon combo is taking forever? Make your own ice cream from half and half and ice water.
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