Notable Online: 6/21–6/27
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Posts Tagged: Caleb Crain
Notable NYC: 2/15–2/21
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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Notable Los Angeles: 9/16–9/22
Literary events in and around L.A. this week!
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Notable NYC: 9/7–9/13
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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Notable NYC: 8/24–8/30
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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The Story Is the Concepts: Philosophizing with Ryan Ruby
Ryan Ruby talks about his debut novel The Zero and the One, the challenges of pacing and plot, and the fun of inventing a book of philosophy for the novel.
...moreAway We Go
Over at the New Yorker, Caleb Crain tackles the ambiguity on the use of “farther” and “further” in contemporary writing: Farther or further? I vary them more or less thoughtlessly in my writing, sometimes to the consternation of copy editors, a number of whom abide by the convention that farther is for literal distance and further for metaphoric distance. I don’t think […]
...moreCyber Stalking Really Is That Bad
Caleb Crain over at The Nation digs in deep to James Lasdun’s new memoir, Give Me Everything You Have, the seemingly terrifying story of his “persecution on the internet by a clever, mentally unbalanced person.” The cyber-harassment (a wildly tame description of Lasdun’s struggle) was the work of a former student of Lasdun’s, who tormented him […]
...moreOn Publishing and Letting Go
“It’s even possible that there’s something retrospective in the nature of writing itself. Probably every writer’s first piece of writing, if it were possible to excavate such a thing, would be found to look backward. Writing tries to fix the past—to hold it in place and sometimes in imagination to improve it.” Author Caleb Crain […]
...moreMalcolm Gladwell, James Wood, and Christine Smallwood Get Evangelical
At a recent n+1 panel discussion, Malcolm Gladwell, James Wood, and Christine Smallwood discussed God as trade, unmetaphysical writers, and intellectualism versus how religion makes you feel.
...moreNotable New York, This Week 12/7 – 12/13
This week in New York Malcolm Gladwell and James Wood talk about Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual, members of the Velvet Underground reunite at the New York Public Library, 60 Writers/60 Places screens, Anne Carson performs, Andy Warhol films get shown at Anthology Film Archives, Mark Doty and Marie Howe read, and Voice 4 Vision […]
...moreNot the Greatest Villains Then Living in the World
The other week, The New Yorker published an excellent article by Caleb Crain about the peculiar economics and politics of life aboard a pirate ship in the 17th and 18th centuries. When the captain of an English slave ship was captured by pirates in 1719, his crew begged the pirates to spare his life, since […]
...moreThe Cost of a Thing
A couple months ago, we wrote about Matthew Crawford’s book Shop Class as Soulcraft, and around the same time I read another interesting review of the book, by Caleb Crain. (I refrained from posting about it at the time to avoid Crain-overkill.) In it, he describes the growth of wages, and consequently, leisure during the […]
...moreDecaying Socialism: Good For Struggling Writers?
Craig Fehrman’s post earlier today, The Freelance Life, got me thinking about something interesting I read in The Wreck of the Henry Clay last week. In a post from April 2003, entitled Marx’s Neurosis About Money, Caleb Crain quoted Edmund Wilson to the effect that “Karl Marx’s social theories suited his psychological needs as an […]
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