Posts by author
Sam Riley
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The Importance of Voting
“Valid objections all, but I’m urging you to please clap on your nasal clothespin and get ready to vote anyway, starting now. Now—before the real craziness begins, while you still have some time to inform yourself to the hilt and…
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A New Old DFW Interview
This 2006 interview with David Foster Wallace has been published for the first time in English. The conversation was part of a larger collection of pieces that highlighted foreign authors, movie directors and artists who were not well known in…
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Murakami on Nuclear Power
Novelist Haruki Murakami critiqued Japan’s reliance on nuclear energy in his International Catalunya prize acceptance speech. He explained the government’s use of nuclear power as a nearsighted decision, solely based on convenience and efficiency. “’We must not be afraid to…
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Creating Jobs
The Atlantic discusses job creation in both words and graphs. Derek Thompson breaks down the problem, explains where the jobs are hiding and tells us how we can grow, economically. “Finally, there is the innovation conundrum. Calling for more innovation…
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Creating Your Own Drama
Reexamining Romeo and Juliet is realizing that you, as a reader, are part of the drama. This HTML giant essay considers how we complicate our lives and thereby, create a much more romantic conception of ourselves. “[We] create our own…
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120 Characters, 1000 Words
A text messaging punctuation choice speaks a thousand words. Texts are rife with innuendo. Comedy writer, Sam Greenspan attempts to deconstruct those subtleties to help you interpret your cellular interactions. (via @BookBench)
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Considering the Short Story
For all the short story readers and writers out there—this Millions essay considers the ups and downs of short story publishing and their synchronistic decline with the mass market magazine readership. There are some illuminating stats on Americans’ short story…
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McSweeeney’s For Minis
McSweeney’s is expanding evermore, this time to include a readership of youngsters and their literary-minded parents. This month they are coming out with McMullens, their children’s book imprint, set to publish around 12 books a year. In true McSweeney’s form,…
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Burns Gets Burned
Remember all those VHS tapes that added up to a compendium of everlasting Civil War knowledge? It turns out Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary series isn’t entirely accurate, but in fact, “deeply misleading and reductive.” This may feel like a…
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E.B. White and his Animals
E.B. White’s anthropomorphisms became childhood story staples, but they were also were a method of expressing himself to his family, and furthermore, significant in the evolution of nature writing. This essay in the Chronicle Review considers E.B. White’s relationship with…
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To the Lighthouse Again
Helen Dunmore wrote the beautiful new introduction to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, published online by Granta, in conjunction with their latest, feminism-themed issue, The F-Word. The beginning of summer and the new intro are both reasons to revisit this…
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More Holiday Excitement
Harmony Holiday, the poet pick for this month’s Rumpus Poetry Book selection, was featured in the Boston Review for National Poetry Month, this past April. There are multi-sensory ways to experience her poetry and thus more reasons to get excited…