Fidel Castro: The Playboy Comandante
The comandante produced ideological fantasies on a mass scale within the context of the Cold War which led to an exotic, sexy, and happy vision of Cuba.
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Posts Tagged: Los Angeles Times
Home-Turned-Library Brings Japanese Literature to Community
For the Los Angeles Times, Kelly Corrigan spoke with Mitsuko Roberts of Glendale, California about The Okanoue Library, a collection of over 700 works of Japanese literature, film, and other media donated by Glendale’s Japanese community. Roberts hosts this collection a few times a month in her home-turned-library, lending out materials and offering Japanese reading classes.
...moreWriting Truth
Over at the Los Angeles Times, Colin Dickey explores the idea of the contemporary American essay as a vehicle for truth. Citing essayists such as John D’Agata, Eula Biss, Leslie Jamison, and Maggie Nelson, Dickey writes: How do you know a thing is true? How do you judge a fact, how do you sift through […]
...moreDoors to Other Possibilities
I think what has brought imaginative fiction, imaginative literature, back into central centrality is that so much of it is very good, and so much of it is kind of needed because of the fact that it sort of opens doors to other possibilities—and that it gives the imagination exercise. The imagination is a very […]
...moreTime is Not on Your Side
Mick Jagger stands for every baby boomer, the generation that refused to grow up. Nothing makes you feel older than watching rock stars grow old. Rich Cohen offers this milepost at the Los Angeles Times to mark Mick Jagger’s journey beyond the land of AARP and into great-grandfatherdom.
...moreTwo Bangladeshi Writers Murdered
Two secular journalists in Bangladesh were murdered recently, and these are far from the first incidents: These are only the latest in a recent string of killings of writers and journalists in Bangladesh. In a searing editorial Monday, the Dhaka Tribune called on authorities to work harder to arrest and prosecute the killers, who frequently […]
...moreOne of the Crowd
12,000 members of the literary community/industry gathered in LA for AWP last week. Viet Thanh Nguyen considers the writer’s sometimes conflicting needs for audience, privacy, and the tribe. He writes of his own process preparing for a readership, “The constant reworking of sentence and narrative through writing short stories was my version of rubbing two sticks […]
...morePaper, Please
A study of 300 college students in the United States, Germany, Slovakia, and Japan found that 92 percent preferred to read paper books over e-books. The students preferred paper because of the “lack of distractions that are available on computers as well as the headaches and eye strain that can result from staring at a […]
...moreLooking into the Future
“What will happen in 2016 in books?” the Los Angeles Times asks in a recent article. And it offers a few predictions: 2016 will be the year of print books, science fiction, and independent presses, among other trends.
...moreOn Writing For Old White Men
At the LA Times, Claire Vaye Watkins recounts her realization that she has been writing to appeal to the white male literary establishment: I am trying to write something urgent, trying to be vulnerable and honest, trying to listen, trying to identify and articulate my innermost feelings, trying to make you feel them too, trying […]
...moreJoyce Carol Oates Riles Twitter
A few days ago, Joyce Carol Oates mused about the media’s coverage of ISIS with a tweet that sparked an intense debate. All we hear of ISIS is puritanical & punitive; is there nothing celebratory & joyous? Or is query naive? –Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates), November 22, 2015 The author’s tweets have invited strong reactions in […]
...moreQuoting Cheryl Strayed
And now I look back and think I’m so glad that I was brave enough to break my own heart—and I wish that I had been braver sooner because maybe I would have broken his a little less. Over at the Los Angeles Times, our very own Cheryl Strayed talks about her new book of […]
...moreJunot Diaz Talks Reading, Books, and Race
In a short interview with the Los Angeles Times, Junot Diaz discusses how he chooses what works to read at events, some books he’s reading now and loving, and America’s uncanny ability to erase racial struggle from its collective mind: I think that we’re in another moment where historically, periodically issues of race and the […]
...moreA Marriage of Fact and Fiction
In a review of Lauren Groff’s novel Fates and Furies, the Los Angeles Times writes: The stories we tell ourselves and others give our lives meaning and allow us to connect with those closest to us. These stories can also mislead, disappoint, and hold us back from being our true selves, selves that belie legible […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
The gamer story. Regardless of its iteration—D&D, Commodore 64, Nintendo, X Box, LARP—there is the hero, and there is the rest of the gang, subjugated as sidekicks and underlings. The gamer story has a long tradition of tropes and structures, arcs and character elements, at the center of which has always been the hero telling […]
...moreAusten Family Letters
The LA Times reports that unpublished letters and poems from Jane Austen’s family have been acquired by the Huntington Library. While none of the letters are from Jane Austen herself, the correspondence will still “provide valuable insight into Jane Austen and her world.”
...moreBan “Bravery” from Book Jackets
David Ulin at the LA Times makes interesting argument for retiring the word “brave” from jacket copy. Citing its overuse and the seeming dissonance of describing literature as brave in the face of countless acts of bravery in the world beyond books every day, Ulin argues that we do our authors a disservice with language that […]
...moreStruggling Writer, The Game
The Los Angeles Times surveyed over 200 writers, asked them how they got to where they are, assembled the pieces, and made this.
...moreRay Bradbury’s Little Yellow Home
Ray Bradbury’s home is up for sale. You can peep the original ad here. His three-bedroom, 2500-square-foot house, built in 1937, is painted a cheery yellow. It has three bathrooms, hardwood floors, and sits on a generously sized 9,500-square-foot lot. It is loaded with original details, the sort that were part of the texture of […]
...moreRIP Maggie Estep
Spoken word poet Maggie Estep has passed away. The Los Angeles Times has a wonderful write up of her life and career and how she shaped a whole movement. “In her early work, Estep was a downtown New Yorker who talked tough, joked and was drawlingly sardonic while being sexually explicit. Her pieces often expressed […]
...moreRoxane Gay Fights the Good Fight
The Los Angeles Times has a great overview of our essays editor Roxane Gay’s latest efforts to spread diversity in the publishing world: “We can’t think of gender without also considering race, class, sexuality and ability,” Gay says. “As long as we keep thinking of diversity as, ‘Oh, we need more women’ or ‘Oh, we need […]
...moreMonster Mashup
To continue on the subject of monsters and mashes for a moment: Last Sunday in the Los Angeles Times, Ed Park published his notes on Laurie Sheck’s A Monster’s Notes, which is a novel narrated by none other than Frankenstein’s monster, who is alive and well (um, make that undead and well) in New York […]
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