- Toni Causey writes a beautiful post about her own Louisiana. A small taste: Like my dad, I was born there, in pure Cajun country. Unlike my dad, I would never know the language, not in its full, rich glory, neither French, nor a corruption of it, but an altered language, spoken still in old cafés with threadbare linoleum and formica countertops in small towns, dim and dusty and far from the interstate. My dad spoke only Cajun until he was in the first grade, when the teachers had been instructed to force all of the kids to speak only English, and stabbed a heritage in its soul without a single blade falling.
- Jed Hartman on several upcoming movies and the development-ridden Last Unicorn, along with some other interesting Peter Beagle updates.
- An extremely entertaining Night Shade thread of guessing about the identity of John 12 Hawks (you remember, that guy, turquoisey mirrorshade ads for his book guy); Tod Goldberg‘s popping his head in is the best part. (Via the S1ngularity blog.)
- C‘s been reading The Futurians and he dug up this fabulous photo of Carol and Ed Emshwiller at the 1959 WorldCon.
- These people are just not getting the Banned Books Week spirit: Meanwhile, in Newark, New Jersey, parents such as Greg and Tina Angeletti are waging a campaign to ban Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s book Song of Solomon from high school English classes. According to the Angelettis, Morrison’s work is “pornography”. School officials disagree, pointing out the whole “Nobel Prize-winning author” thing. Proof that it doesn’t only happen in states that start with K. (I was thinking of Kansas.)
- Poetry and politics at the National Book Festival. (Great piece.)
- You lost me after the first two…
- Is this pointing out the obvious or is it just me? (Perhaps it’s really controversial.)
- Finally, a piece on Curtis Sittenfeld and Prep in the Guardian, with some charming bits. (I updated the Reads column over on the left this weekend with my own nominee for best boarding school book of the year; mileage may vary.) This is my favorite part: ‘Most, if not all, of what I experience now I’ve experienced a variation of it before,’ she goes on, jadedly. ‘If I went to my first dinner party, I’m sure I would notice everything the hostess said and everything people were wearing and everything people talked about; now I’ve gone to enough that they just blur together. These are the biggest chunks of blue cheese I’ve ever seen in a salad,’ she adds as our food arrives, endearingly rubbishing her point. This seems perhaps not the best strategy for experiencing, y’know, life. The end of the article says her next novel is called The Man of My Dreams, but I’m sure it’s litrature and not chick lit.
And on that note of snark–which hurts me, really and truly, it does–happy Monday. At some point this week expect posts on: life in glasses, Marcy Demansky’s fabulous novel Twins, television goodness and conspiracy theories. Or at least some of that stuff. A few other Monday items below…