In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, volunteers have spontaneously organized to help the many, many people whose homes were destroyed or damaged by the storm. Many displaced or electricity-lacking NYC residents are still in need of hot meals. Occupy Sandy has been coordinating deliveries and making some food at their hubs in Brooklyn, but a lot of the food they're distributing is coming from various kitchens in churches and schools and even homes, and some of those volunteers are also finding ways to deliver the food themselves. (Here's what's happening and where to help for Thanksgiving.)
This outpouring of community support gives me a schizoid blend of alternately [...]
"Who among us is noble enough not to envy Lena Dunham?" Elizabeth Gumport begins her analysis of Tiny Furniture in the n+1 film review supplement. (Disclosure: I'm a contributor.) Dunham's born-on-third-baseness, and the fact that her autobiographical film addressed it directly, was one of the factors that made it nearly impossible for a lot of critics to treat TF fairly when it was first released. In retrospect, this seems like an embarrassing mistake on their part. Worse, they also screwed up, per Gumport, by assuming that by turning the camera on herself, Dunham was making a movie about her appearance: "if a young woman wants to talk about [...]
In your twenties you just kind of chug along,” Eileen Myles says, “dredging up feelings as you go.” You “consider your behavior just art, grist for the mill.” So when I said “it’s over,” I was talking about the grist. Goodbye, mill.
Ladies we like teaming up and whatnot! The Emily Books book-of-the-month club is putting out Eileen Myles' Inferno today. (You can still buy it in actual "paper" form here.) And here are some thoughts on the book today. You will remember Myles either quite warmly or angrily from her work right here and also here.
"In college, during the time that I went to a college that had majors, I thought mine would be English, so I took a poetry class because it was required. The professor had long, long center-parted flat brown hair and was rumored to be going through a divorce. The celebrity she most closely resembled was the farm wife in the painting American Gothic crossed with an Aubrey Beardsley engraving of the Lady of Shalott. (This is how I thought about things at the time.) We read poems by women poets who were dissatisfied with their domestic lives, or by Randall Jarrell posing as one of these women…. Everything about the [...]
Barbara Comyns is always being compared to writers X, Y or Z “on acid.” The acid part is a cop-out; her voice is clear and direct, even when describing surreal or hyperreal situations, and her crisp descriptions are not kaleidoscopic or druggy in the least. The comparisons to other writers, apt or not, are never a list of her formative influences; she didn’t have any.
Comyns was born in 1909 in a big house on the Avon, fourth of the six children of a drunk father and an indifferent mother. The family managed to be aristocratic and poor at once, but like many aristocrats they [...]
In today's episode, the intrepid Emily Gould meets Marcy Dermansky, the author of Bad Marie, which is about a woman who gets out of prison who is not so good at child care! So of course, here in our glamorous test kitchen, they make mac and cheese and instant pudding. Cooking the Books is directed by Valerie Temple and shot and edited by Andrew Gauthier. You can see all the Cooking the Books episodes here or even subscribe via iTunes. Previously: Tao Lin makes raw salad; Jennifer Egan makes macaroons. Plus! Veggie Burgers Every Which Way.
