I’m a sucker for seeing so many writers on home turf. I don’t know why, but there’s something so sweet about seeing Susan Sontag’s bed sans sheets, or Zora Neale Hurston’s little typewriter.
Jessa Crispin poses a question in public that I’ve been grappling with in private for a while; “Perhaps my problem...has more to do with no longer finding feminism to be a useful filter through which to look at the world...[E]ndlessly recapping Girls doesn’t seem to be making the world a safer place for women.” Sabrina Maddeaux, The Toronto Standard’s managing editor, has a similar complaint—and I wonder: is there a point at which feminist media criticism just becomes link bait? I mean, it’s a thought, and one I’ve been having for a while. Not unlike Hazlitt’s own Sarah Nicole Prickett, I wonder about the value of some imposed (and only semi-political) sorority among all women in this, and, actually, any other age.
Here: almost five minutes of Kurt Vonnegut on the algorithmic curvature of a few good and archetypical stories. Also, this LRB diary entry on Fanfic might be a good way to spend your lunch hour. TGIFanfiction, and all.
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Image of Zora Neale Hurston from Carl Van Vechten/Beinecke Library
