Look at all those lil geniuses. One day, the MacArthur foundation will recognize Mallory. Here is a brief reaction interview that our own Annalisa Quinn did with Alison Bechdel:
Do you have a goal for your work —- something in particular you want it to show or teach people?
Do I have a goal for my work? Once many years ago I wrote myself a “mission statement.” It was “To unceasingly excavate the potsherds of truth from the sediment of convenience.” I guess that continues to be my goal.
You may be too good for this, but I’m not.
Louisa Thomas on the NFL:
The NFL calls itself a family. If that’s the case, it’s a family of fathers and sons but not wives and daughters. It’s a family that more closely resembles the mob than a family connected by blood or love. It’s a family that protects its own by cutting others, a family that privileges loyalty over what’s right. But loyalty goes only so far in the NFL — because at some not-so-distant point, the family turns into a business. When concussions enter into it, or salary caps, or age, the family becomes about winning Sunday’s big game or about the business’s bottom line. If it’s a family, then it’s a fucked-up family.
Books that should be turned into concept albums:
1. Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays: The Mountain Goats
Numerous bands and singer-songwriters throughout the years have made concept albums based entirely around a certain book, from Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds (a retelling of H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds) to Locrian’s The Crystal World (inspired by J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World) to Grimes’ Geidi Primes (about Frank Herbert’s Dune). That said, more artists should do it. As formats, the novel and the full-length album have much in common when it comes to scope, and of course, musicians are often happy to talk about their literary influences (if not reference them in song). John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats is one of them. Not only does the indie troubadour have a debut novel of his own, Wolf In White Van, on the shelves now, he once stated inan interview that one of his favorite novels is Joan Didion’s 1970 masterpiecePlay It As It Lays. Darnielle should be held to that confession: A Mountain Goats album that turns Didion’s stark portrait of Hollywood despair into, well, stark and despairing songs could be a beautiful thing.
The most feminist moments in sci-fi history:
Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain Publishes “Sultana’s Dream” (1905)
It’s criminal that Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain is rarely mentioned alongside her American feminist contemporaries. Her work on behalf of women’s rights in early 20th-century India included establishing the first school for Muslim girls and the publication of multiple gender-centric stories. In the short utopian satire “Sultana’s Dream,” the tradition of purdah (in which women are hidden from society in various ways) is reversed so that men are the isolates, and women invent and benefit from advanced technology, including flying cars and solar power. With its publication, Hussain became not only one of the best-known Islamic feminist authors, but also one of the very first known feminist sci-fi writers in the East or West, period. (Read it here.)
Excavating the more-recent past:
One day in the winter of 1981, a young archaeologist named E. Breck Parkman was prowling around the ruins of a burned out mansion north of San Francisco when, in a corner, he came upon a large mound of charred wood and other debris. Nothing much was recognizable, Parkman remembers. But poking out of the pile were a few scraps of tie-dyed fabric.
“I was only trolling, why did you get mad? haha. why did you get mad. literally teach me basic human emotions”
— kimmy (@arealliveghost) October 21, 2012
