Hi friends it is Friday but I have a Thing on Saturday that I’m terrified about, so Friday is no relief to me at all. Come Saturday night I will be relieved, and then not too long after that I have a vacation, and that will be very lovely indeed. In the meantime, have some links. Mallory Ortberg’s piece about trying a binder for the first time is immensely lovely and moving (though also quite melancholy). On Hemingway tourism in Cuba. Oh Hemingway. What a poop he was. Deji Bryce Olukoton writes on the future of Nigeria and Nigerian science…
8 CommentsTag: oscar wilde
Happy Friday, everyone! I have had a stupid week and am psyched for it to be over! So here are some links, as ever, for your delectation and delight. First and most importantly, Book Blogger Appreciation Week is NEXT WEEK. I’ll be hosting a Twitter chat on Tuesday at 9 PM EST, and the blogosphere at large will be squeeing about our love for each other all week long. Don’t miss it. I admit this has nothing to do with anything, but Caity Weaver’s GQ profile of Justin Bieber is magic. It’s unsettling to share a personal story, or ask…
14 CommentsCan I brag for a quick sec? This week I got renters insurance for the first time ever. BOOM. ADULTING. Though, I hope the hurricanes of the world won’t take this as permission to bring around a cloud to rain on my parade. If the internet were a high school. I like the BuzzFeed one the best. Also keep your eyes peeled for a cameo by the Lizzie Bennet Diaries‘s own William Darcy. Scott Tobias wrote an article called The Church of Scientology is Bad at Twitter, which is one of many reasons I cherish the internet. Trevor Noah is…
12 CommentsC. P. Cavafy: I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM. I have such a crush on Cavafy right now. I want to collect every translation of his poems that has ever been done, and compare them. I want to learn modern Greek, an impulse I have never had before, just so I can read Cavafy in the original. Wikipedia says translations don’t capture Cavafy. In fact it says “the poems also exhibit a skilled and versatile craftsmanship, which is almost completely lost in translation.” Dammit. But even so, check it: As one long since prepared, as one courageous, as befits you…
33 CommentsPoor Dodie Smith. What a shame to have written your first book, and it’s I Capture the Castle, not far off being the best book ever, narrated by a character that is the perfect blend of innocence and charming worldly practicality. Thereafter you can write more books, but none of them will ever be as good, and everyone will feel sad that your subsequent books are not I Capture the Castle. In fact it would not be unbearably dissimilar to the plight of the father in I Capture the Castle, except without the Joyce comparisons. It Ends with Revelations has…
47 CommentsI do not appreciate the suggestion that Oscar Wilde’s cleverness consisted in paradoxical epigram. I will accept gracious tributes to Wilde’s way with epigrams, like Dorothy Parker’s: If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit. We all assume that Oscar said it. Thank you, Dorothy Parker. You have lovely qualities and could bang out epigrams with the best of them. I will not, however, sit idly by in the face of any slighting reference to Oscar Wilde that implies that he was not as witty and charming as he is…
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