2011
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Radiance
In Louis B. Jones’s new novel Radiance, Mark Perdue, a mildly depressed astrophysicist with Lyme disease, takes his daughter to L.A. for a weekend.
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Journalism and its Forever Problems
Here is a GOOD Books’ list of past journalistic scandals, which given the state of the current phone-hacking mess, is some necessary zoomed-out context on the history of journalism. For example, remember William Randolph Hearst’s megalomanic media domination? Or the…
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Dan WEiss’s Morning Coffee
Long story short: most of our ancestors boned neanderthals, case closed. Anyone want to go to an underwater museum with me? Viva Mexican Modernismo! I bet it gets kind of tedious, all that whimsy. Holy cow volcanoes are exciting!
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All Your Base Are Belong To Us
Note: This is the final installment of a three-part series. Here are parts 1 and 2.
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Didion and Diagnoses
“Diagnosis never seems to lead to a cure, Didion observes, only an enforced debility. But as with a psychiatric evaluation of herself conducted in 1968 […] Didion sees and reflects on the truths of the assessment even as she ponders…
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This Year’s Caine Prize
Contemporary African fiction is celebrated with the Caine Prize, awarded to the best African short story written in English. This year’s prize went to a Zimbabwean writer named NoViolet Bulawayo whose story, “Hitting Budapest,” which describes hunger with a Márquez-ian…
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A Little Bit of Murakami
Oh look, it’s the first few lines of Haruki Murakami’s impending publication, 1Q84. The book was a major hit when it came out in Japan around two years ago. Alas, it is soon-to-be-released here and in the UK. It’s three…
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Gay Marriage for America
Love and the pursuit of happiness were the impetus for Andrew Sullivan’s move from the UK to America. He wrote a beautiful essay for Newsweek on the benefits of gay marriage for straight America. With our “inalienable human rights” being…
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Sandberg in Silicon Valley
Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, is profiled in the New Yorker. The gender-divided executive culture in Silicon Valley is manifested in the seriously unbalanced ratio of women and men executives. This essay discusses Sandberg’s history and theorizes about…
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On Why We Need Some Critics Like Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses puts the author’s critical and nonfiction prowess on display. It’s a collection of essays and writing from his newspaper column (which was titled Between Parentheses), compiled after the publication of The Savage Detectives. Most of the…