Flavorwire
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Celebrating the “American Bible”
In accordance with the 163rd anniversary of Moby-Dick, Elisabeth Donnelly explores why Melville’s “American Bible” is still relevant today: Perhaps what Moby-Dick has to offer for generations of readers is “a shaft of light in the darkness,” as Philbrick puts it. “Not that it provides any…
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The Battle Rages On
At Flavorwire, Jonathan Sturgeon continues the “literary” and “genre” war, offering a new perspective grounded in the marketplace: So what’s really going on here? Well, it isn’t the genre of prose that has literary novelists anxious. It’s the market status…
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A New Community
Laurie Penny, journalist and author of Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution, talks to Flavorwire about feminism, Ferguson, and the harassment of female journalists online: The fact that there’s an enormous backlash against women’s liberation online doesn’t mean that the…
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Trigger Art
Feminists and transphobic conservatives have found common ground in attacking Lena Dunham after the publication of her memoir revealed that her seven-year-old self had been curious about her sister’s vagina. Dunham creates trigger art, explains Sarah Seltzer at Flavorwire, intentionally…
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Fail Worse
If our current understanding of Beckett’s “fail better” command implies eventual success, what of failure whose endgame is really just failure? Over at Flavorwire, Jonathon Sturgeon makes a case for the value of failure itself (future success optional): When a…
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Skewed Standards
The YA battle rages on at Flavorwire, where Sarah Seltzer responds to Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker essay pondering the effects of supposedly lowbrow children’s lit: We have to interrogate our basic assumption that writing skills possessed by educated white people…
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Pride, Prejudice, Repeat
Jane Austen has been blowing up these days, with hundreds of fan-fictional responses to Pride and Prejudice gracing the dusty corners of bookstores and the Internet. Over at Flavorwire, Sarah Seltzer wonders why we’re still so eager to return to…
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Trigger Warnings
With the American Association of University Professors announcing its opposition to providing trigger warnings, Emily Semple shares some of her thoughts on the subject at Flavorwire.
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Can Poptimism Save Literary Culture?
Literary criticism suffers from elitism, claims Elisabeth Donnelly over at Flavorwire, and the solution is introducing a poptimism revolution. The term poptimism originated in the music world as a reaction to stodgy music reviewers’ love of Bob Dylan and “argues…
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Peak Dystopia
Adam Sternbergh, author of Dystopian novel Shovel Ready, asked whether readers are burning out on the Dystopian novel. He goes as far as suggesting that perhaps the next great novel will be a Utopian one. Emily Temple, writing at Flavorwire,…
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New, Old Salinger Stories
Having realized the rights to three unpublished Salinger stories were unclaimed, small publisher Devault-Graves set about purchasing them. The stories were published earlier this week. But despite the fun of having a little more Salinger to read, some are unhappy with…
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The Era of Celebrity Bookselling
The Colbert Bump helped propel Edan Lepucki‘s California to the third spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Lena Dunham’s endorsement helped sell Adelle Waldman‘s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Celebrity and celebrity endorsements have long played a role…