A lot of news the past couple weeks!
But before we get into that, we should start, as always, with the earth. LitHub ran a great conversation about how we might breathe more urgency into the climate crisis through description and representation of climate emergencies as they occur in real time. Often, events happen so quickly and in such distant locations that they get swept to the wayside. The earth is issue number one, and it likely will be for the rest of our lives. We gotta keep moving forward on this stuff.
So much of policy action is dependent, unfortunately, on the wealth. The term “OK boomer” has made headlines the past couple weeks along with some [ridiculous] comments made by the absurdly wealthy. Rebecca Solnit did everyone a favor and rolled the two issues into one: “OK billionaire.” She discusses the unbalanced political sway of billionaires as a threat to positive change. You can find the article here. On the other end of the spectrum, younger generations are finding it difficult to deal with rapidly shifting material relations. LitHub ran a great article on the idea of home and displacement in millennial memoir. And, if all this isn’t enough, check out this run-down on Charlotte’s Web. Erin Wisti pulls the wisdom from this beloved children’s classic, such as how to resist the bullshit of late-stage capitalism. And so on.
In other news, literary superstar Carmen Maria Machado’s new book In the Dream House was released recently. ElectricLit ran a wonderful piece about the way Machado’s book seems to invent a new genre: the gothic novel. Speaking of big names, The New Yorker transcribed a speech by Karl Ove Knausgaard about the slowness of literature in the face of cultural change. And, finally, the literary world lost acclaimed African-American author Ernest J. Gaines in November, and NPR put out a wonderful obituary.
That’s all for this week.