The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
A fantastic essay at The New Inquiry inspects the recently deceased Chinua Achebe’s place in the Western literary canon.
...moreIn an interview a few years ago, Norman Rush was talking about the ways he was influenced by African writers, and he mentioned that “No non-African could do what Achebe has done.” And I get what he was saying.
MOOC’s are a word for forgetting that universities have never grown without being planted, for trusting that just as students can teach themselves, universities will magically grow themselves, too.
In the 21st century, many universities have been changing their game and debilitating higher education by turning it into a corporate ordeal.
...more...moreThat the Ironman participant may be as vain or as emotionally distressed as a freely directed exerciser becomes irrelevant, because the Ironman race, like a Thanksgiving feast, takes place in the presence of many others pursuing the same extreme pleasure. It has finite, communally agreed-upon bounds.
“Let me say and I probably mean this in the most manifesto-ing way that genres don’t exist. They don’t exist at all. They serve the needs of marketing, of academic specialization, even as modes of work, but in terms of meaning or content or associative formations they are like traffic lights—not so interesting and most adamantly not what we are doing today.”
The New Inquiry conducts a five question interview with Eileen Myles.
...more