Sci-Fi Suggests That We Can’t Run Away From Our Problems, Even If We Go to Space
Last week, Elon Musk shared SpaceX’s vision to put humans on Mars and eventually start a colony. Colonizing Mars is an appealing idea, especially among those, such as Stephen Hawking, who believe our future as a species relies on our ability to become interplanetary. In science fiction, off-Earth
On Abstraction and Acessibility: Poetry, Perspective, and the Painting of Jordan Kantor
Lately, I've been particularly intrigued by the work of Jordan Kantor. His work has prompted me to revisit how I have been formulating the Venn diagram of poetry and painting. Kantor is an artist who gets many things right.
Fiction Responding to Fiction: Nunez, Rushdie, and Seidlinger
The writers discussed the many ways in which fiction can respond to fiction. Of particular note was the impetus for using a particular source text—what inspired the response—and the extent to which a retelling can or should stand on its own without an intimate knowledge of the original.
Edges and Awakenings: Paul Ruffin’s “Hog-Killing Weather”
Paul Ruffin had me at the title. It wasn’t the spectacle of the hog-killing I was drawn to so much as the way he undercuts the brutality to focus our attention on the weather. I liked the juxtaposition, the audacity of deflecting our attention from the sensational to the
Review: HERE I AM by Jonathan Safran Foer
Though it asks the questions, Here I Am is not here to answer inquiries, eschewing easy answers or clean endings. It may not be a manual for life, but it is a way of locating oneself in the world.
Can the Language of Food Unite the World?
In an earlier post, I wrote about how food writers grapple with the challenge of describing taste and smell. There are many more aspects to the language used to describe food. Stanford University linguist Dan Jurafsky has written a fascinating study, The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the
How to Find Your Self (and How to Kill It): A Conversation with Suzi Analogue and Nathaniel Mackey on Black Music
I talk to Nathaniel Mackey and musician Suzi Analogue about how to, in Amiri Baraka's words, find the self, then kill it—and about the role of technology in that process.
The Impact of Expat Writers in Uncertain Times: Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell's life-long relationship with Greece began early. Like Patrick Leigh Fermor, he too was the product of British colonialism, having been born in Jalandar, a case that may be more common than is often realized in thinking about Britain's involvement in India.
The Art of the Twitter Essay
Twitter is maybe one of the most ideal places to watch a draft shape itself into a finished essay—a public place for us to learn the bones.
Untethered Text: The Rise and Fall of Olive Oatman
A life of reading often produces the waking sensation that you have seen a ghost. The spectrum of your experiences multiply, your emotional range balloons, you experience déjà vu by virtue of the lives you’ve lived, shared, or been privy to on the page.