Best of the Week: April 20 – 24, 2015

TODAY: Published today in 1719, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, has influenced such cultural phenomena as “Cast Away” and that game where you list books you want to take with you to a desert island. 

• To ensure long-lasting literary distinction, die young, in a beautiful place, and at peace with your extended family. | The New Yorker
• Seeking an identity for “the most nowhere part of America” in William H. Gass, David Foster Wallace, and Etheridge Knight. | Electric Literature
• The Pulitzer Prizes were announced; winners include Anthony Doerr, Gregory Pardlo, and Elizabeth Kolbert. | The Pulitzer Prizes
• “The writing is—I’m free from pain. It’s the place where I live; it’s where I have control; it’s where nobody tells me what to do; it’s where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best.” An interview with Toni Morrison. | NPR
• “Don’t write like a writer; write like a talker.” An interview with Atticus Lish. | The Quietus
• Before he became a literary superstar, Haruki Murakami wrote short stories for men’s clothing advertisements. | Open Culture
• Scientists have finally given us permission to fully disregard grammar fanatics. | The Washington Post
• The American dream (or nightmare) as the subject of every American novel. | The Guardian
• For many better VIDA counts to come: a list of every literary magazine with a female editor and a database for writers of color, courtesy of Jazmine Hughes and Durga Chew-Bose. | The Review Review, Google Docs
• “The reality is more like you’re sitting alone, post-carnival, on a cigarette-butt encrusted patch of grass typing your own name into Bing.” The darker side of publishing your debut. | BuzzFeed
• A writer’s writer on steroids: on Karl Ove Knausgaard’s critical acclaim and cult following. | Vulture
• “I felt it was insincere of people to express shock when confronting the fact that lethal police violence toward black men is endemic to American society.” On the far-reaching roots of police brutality. | N+1
• Jonathan Franzen, self-proclaimed King of the Birds, is at it again. | The Village Voice
• “The music should go into the interstices of the text, as it were.” What Philip Glass learned from Samuel Beckett. | The New Yorker
• Before it was de-mounded, Grave Creek Mound was host to a burial site, elaborate hoax, potential prison yard, and teenage antics. | Longreads
• “Home is where you don’t have to spell your name.” On acquiring and rejecting an Anglicized nickname. | The Hairpin
• Jonathan Basile has created a virtual version of Borges’s infinite library. | Library of Babel
• “When I introduced [John] Cheever to Donleavy, Donleavy wouldn’t even look at him; he went on talking to his wife, about aspirin, as if Cheever wasn’t there.” A wonderful exchange between John Irving and J.P. Donleavy, who turned 89 yesterday. | The Paris Review
• “There are always unintended consequences to every choice.” An interview with Kazuo Ishiguro on The Arcade podcast. | Hazlitt
• A collection of unpublished, candid photographs of artists, including John Dos Passos and E.M Forster. | The New York Times Magazine
• “Russian humor is to ordinary humor what backwoods fundamentalist poisonous snake handling is to a petting zoo. Russian humor is slapstick, only you actually die.” Ian Frazier on the works of Daniil Kharms. | NYRB

 

And from Literary Hub:

• Four poets on the legacy and influence of Amiri Baraka.| Literary Hub
• Angela Flournoy writes about writing about gentrification and the disappearance of black neighborhoods. | Literary Hub
• Russell Banks drives around Alaska in a Hummer because “these are the Last Days. The planet is running out of everything except human beings.” | Literary Hub
• Writers and fighters: on wanting to punch Norman Mailer. | Literary Hub
• Helen Macdonald’s falconry as therapy, and a reading from The Goshawk by T. H. White. | Literary Hub

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