“Time and Distance Overcome” by Eula Biss
This is easily the best essay collection I’ve read this year. I had previously encountered Biss reading Volume 1 of Best Creative Nonfiction, as well as on the wonderful podcast…
An update to my experiences with Google voice typing on Docs:
A previous post chronicled my trials of Google’s voice typing program, and now that I’ve used it a bit more, I have some further thoughts. 1: It’s damn handy…
“Testing 1 2 3 I’m testing this voice to text…
The above is what happened when I started trying Google's new voice to text program. This program is available on Google Docs or Google Drive, and I'm using it right…
Maggie Nelson’s “Bluets”
Bluets Maggie Nelson “Bluets” is an essay written in short bursts, meditations in miniature on the color blue and all its Western connotations, on depression, on sex, on tranquility and…
Matthew Vollmer’s “Future Missionaries of America”
Future Missionaries of America Matthew Vollmer This was my favorite short story collection of 2016 (of meaning “read during”). Vollmer’s book “Inscriptions for Headstones” was high on my list in…
Reading fees, classism, and literary privilege
http://rhizomaticideas.com/the-fallacy-of-the-serious-writer/ Rhizomaticideas.com recently published a great short essay on the problems with literary magazines charging a reading fee. As someone with a serious Marxist chip on my shoulder, (see attached…
Djuna Barnes’ “Nightwood” and the virtues of reading good shit you don’t like
Nightwood T.S. Eliot said of Djuna Barnes’ 1936 novel “Nightwood” that “it is so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it”. There’s a poetic…
Angela Davis’ “Abolition Democracy”
Angela Davis has a pretty fantastic author’s byline. She’s run for vice-president of the United States twice on the Communist Party USA ticket, she’s been on the FBI’s “Ten Most…
The Short Stories of Breece D’J Pancake
http://assets.uvamagazine.org/images/uploads/2015/Spring_2015/BreecePancake.jpg Breece D’J Pancake killed himself at 27. Whenever someone who evidences some kind of brilliance kills themselves (or merely meets an untimely end,) it seems difficult to separate the…
The Guardian’s “The Counted,” Police Brutality, and Big News Close to Home
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/01/the-county-kern-county-deadliest-police-killings British newspaper The Guardian has been running a series of reports into police violence in America, and as part of that project, they produced one of the best pieces…