And More Links

  • The home where Dickens completed Bleak House has been partially damaged in a fire.
  • Marion Meade takes on Dorothy Parker. (via Chekhov’s Mistress)
  • Don DeLillo’s new play Loves-Lies-Bleeding gets some coverage. Is it okay if I crack a few Henry James jokes? (via Sheila Heti’s #1 Fan)
  • Over at I Love Books, folks are ranking Ulysses‘ chapters by their comprehensibility.
  • Jim Crace digests Francis Fukuyama. (via Jenny D)
  • Laila points to Haze, the latest Campo Santo production. We’d go, but not only are we profoundly exhausted, but there’s this horrible tax thing we’ve got to take care of this week.
  • Holy shit! Lizzie Skurnick hasn’t disappeared from the face of the earth!
  • Profile of Sengealese novelist Aminata Sow Fall.
  • Sheila O’Flanagan: “I enjoyed the suits and briefcases and high heels. Then I got this urge to write.”
  • Caitlin Flanagan, perhaps the only woman boosting Eisenhower-era values in the 21st century and a writer mistakenly identified as “intellectual” by the likes of the Atlantic and the New Yorker, blogged at Powell’s last week: “We laugh at the conformity that led to the ‘squareness’ of the Fifties, but we often forget to honor that decade’s emphasis on character, conscience, and civic responsibility that led to some of the great social achievements that followed, including civil rights and the women’s movement.” In fact, it was this emphasis on “Occupation: Housewife,” a woman’s second-tier status to a man (conscience!) and the “civic responsibility” of doing nothing more than cooking and cleaning that led women to call bullshit on the idea that they were somehow lesser than men. That anyone could “honor” this, without citing a single reason why, much less restrain laughter at celebrating such antediluvian values in the 21st century, is perhaps a vital clue that Ms. Flanagan is out to lunch, out of touch, and wholly unqualified to write for any media outlet.

2 Comments

  1. “A spokesperson for Kent Fire and Rescue Service, Ken Newberry, said it is not yet known how the fire started and a fire investigation officer would be investigating.”

    I suppose they’ve ruled out spontaneous combustion.

  2. The fifties also destroyed the careers and lives of quite a few artists, or at least those not willing to rat out their friends.

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