Tag / Fiction

by Nerdy Spice

Links We Loved This Week — 10/29/17

If you haven’t read it, Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch,” published in Granta a few years ago and based on the story of the girl with the green ribbon around her neck, makes for great Halloween reading.

LitHub has a fascinating article on James Baldwin’s giant FBI file. Turns out one way to make the bureau lose its shit was to be an influential black writer who was planning a book on the FBI.

I remember how amused I was when I went to Planet Fitness last year and realized TNT was STILL rerunning Charmed every morning. I was trying to think of something that was more undeserving of such longevity and the best I could come up with is “It’s like if a radio station was still playing S Club 7 every day.” Anyway, Vulture published a hilarious piece called “The Best Thing to Watch at the Gym Is Silent Reruns of Charmed,” where the author tries to figure out the plot just from staring at Charmed playing every morning at the gym. Money quote: “I tried dating Charmed episodes by fashion, but the series takes place in a world where crop tops are always in style.”

by Nerdy Spice

Links We Loved This Week — 9/30/16

 

Svetlana Mintcheva, writing for Salon, manages to tackle the Great Lionel Shriver Internet Meltdown without herself melting down, articulating a nuanced but still socially responsible take on the responsibilities of fiction writers:

Whether they succeed in communicating empathy and in creating a character that is complex and true, depends on the capacity of the writer as a writer and his or her creative integrity, not on the person’s skin color, sexuality or cultural background.

Do you follow Rabih Alameddine (author of one of my favorite-ever female fictional characters) on Twitter yet? The New Yorker wrote an interesting piece about his process.

Not technically a pop culture related piece, but by one of our favorite novelists: Michael Chabon wrote a devastatingly beautiful piece about his teenage son’s love for fashion, for GQ.

In case you missed it, the New York Times published an exquisitely mean review of a new Jane Jacobs biography, including jabs like this:

It often seems to be muttered as much as written, like one of those garbled subway announcements you cannot understand but suspect might matter.