Curiosities

May 15, 2013

Fifty Shades of Scandal 0

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What’s the translation of “ooh la la”? Looks like Fifty Shades of Grey has become a contraband hit in China.

May 15, 2013

The Humanity of Books 0

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“To me a book is not just a particular file. It’s connected with personhood. Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of a summit of grappling with what one really has to say. And what I’m concerned with is when Silicon Valley looks at books, they often think of them as [...]

May 15, 2013

Spring Awakening 0

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Virgil and the springtime mysteries of Margaret Fuller.

May 15, 2013

“A female Genet” 0

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“Would I have carried myself with the same swagger, or faced adversity with such feminine resolve, without Albertine as my guide?…I was drawn to a striking, remote face—rendered violet on black—on a dust jacket proclaiming its author ‘a female Genet.’ It cost 99 cents, the price of a grilled cheese and coffee at the Waverly [...]

May 15, 2013

Shock and Auden 0

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A lost journal of W. H. Auden, one of three that the poet is known to have kept, has recently been discovered.

May 14, 2013

The School of Life 1

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“There is something ersatz, if not quite fraudulent, about [Alain] de Botton’s entire intellectual enterprise.” At The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lisa Levy throws down the gauntlet.