August 2012
15 posts
4 tags
Hating Fantasy
Last night two things happened. The first, more mundane event was I finished reading The Magicians. The second, actually impactful event was that I made the conscious decision to abandon the fantasy genre—at least for foreseeable future.
Fantasy literature and I have never been friends. When I tell people that I am not a big fan of this genre, their first reaction is to tell me that I just...
“Wallace did not hear subtle variations in no; he knew only one way to seduce:...”
– Excerpted from D.T. Max’s DFW biography, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story. (via millionsmillions)
So glad that I pre-ordered this!
2 tags
Pussy Riot Found Guilty →
In a closing statement, Ms. Tolokonnikova, the most outspoken of the defendants, railed against repression in Russia.
“To my deepest regret, this mock trial is close to the standards of the Stalinist troikas,” she said.
I really wish I was still in Russia right now; I’d love to hear what my former students’ thoughts are about all of this.
Natalie Zed: Girlfriend Mode vs Girlfriend Metal →
nataliezed:
This short piece chronicles a Twitter rant that I went on this morning, in response to a couple of things: The fact that the lead designer for the forthcoming game Borderlands 2, John Hemingway, repeatedly referred to the Mechromancer skill tree (that is built into the game and is specifically…
3 tags
“If I am to be terribly stereotypical, I’d say the literary crush I hear most...”
– http://www.themillions.com/2012/08/on-the-highway-of-love-jack-kerouac-divides-men-and-women.html
If you’re over the age of 17, and you still think that preferring Kerouac to Austen makes you somehow different from ‘stereotypical women,’ then you should probably really reevaluate...
4 tags
“…to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be...”
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“This American penchant for absolution via irony is foreign to them.”
– Infinite Jest, DFW
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Reading Infinite Jest
I’m a quarter of a way through Infinite Jest, and have finally reached a point where I no longer feel like I am forcing myself to keep reading. There’s no denying that DFW was a great writer and his ability to pack in such a level of detail is astounding. Even though I am enjoying myself while reading, I still occasionally have these moments of self-doubt: Why am I taking the time to...
3 tags
Reading DFW
Spent the better part of the evening reading old DFW’s essays. I just wanted to highlight this particular passage:
Dostoevsky is a literary titan, and in some ways this can be the kiss of death, because it becomes easy to regard him as yet another sepia-tinted Canonical Author, belovedly dead.
it would be nice if longreads tried a little...
maura:
Or are they just making a sly metacommentary on how fewer and fewer outlets have the resources/space/balls to run pieces that fit their criteria?
Sadly, I think it’s the second one.
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“Here sister Mary trained her up, and Mary was trained in a brothel. Do you know...”
– Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall
Roxane Gay is Spelled With One "N": How to Be... →
roxanegay:
1. Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be toxic, bitchy or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses—pretty but designed to SLOW women down.
1A. This is not to say women aren’t bitches or toxic or competitive sometimes but rather to say that these are not defining…
4. If you are the kind of woman who says, “I’m mostly friends with guys,” and act...
