Link Roundup!

by Roxane Gay · December 28, 2014

I hope everyone had a merry, merry. Today I’ve got some delicious pastry, Edith Wharton, arrogant Kobe Bryant and the wonder of space travel for you. I am watching The Wire for the first time and it has mostly been a devastating trauma but the show is excellent, so very excellent.

Pastries are delicious and often very pretty and here are some pastry shops that are even prettier than the confections found within.

At Bitch Flicks, Ren Jender reviews not only Wild but some of the sexist reviews that have followed the movie’s release.

Edith Wharton stays fabulous.

If you want to attend Bindercon LA and you need some financial assistance, the deadline to apply for a scholarship is December 31.

I was utterly captivated by an article in The Atlantic about life in space. The lives of astronauts living in space are intricately scripted. Spreadsheets are involved as well as a whole lot of people on the ground in Houston. I know things about space now.

Sleep position presents its own challenges. The main question is whether you want your arms inside or outside the sleeping bag. If you leave your arms out, they float free in zero gravity, often drifting out from your body, giving a sleeping astronaut the look of a wacky ballet dancer. “I’m an inside guy,” Hopkins says. “I like to be cocooned up.”

Here is a masterclass on using the word fuck in all its variations, courtesy of The Wire, which I am still making my way through for the first time.

A lot of attention is given to “young” writers, often to the detriment of people who debut after the age of, say, 40. Randy Susan Meyers offers a list of debut writers older than 40.

Kobe Bryant may be past his prime but he is not above THIS.

At the New York Review of Books, Tim Parks writes about how he reads and how we can read better.

As I dive into the opening pages, the first question I’m asking is, what are the qualities or values that matter most to this author, or at least in this novel? I start Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and at once it is about a man who has been excluded from a group of friends without knowing why; the mishap has plunged him into a depression that seems disproportionate to the damage suffered. So I begin to look for everything relating to community and belonging, to the individual’s relationship to the community, to loneliness and companionship. I underline any words that fall into this lexical field. Is the community positive or negative or both? Are there advantages to being excluded, even when it is painful? Do loneliness and depression produce strength, creativity? Is the book aligning itself with the position of the person excluded?

The new Turkish palace has 1,100 rooms and I keep thinking about what kind of upkeep that must require.

On the outskirts of the Turkish capital, a new landmark looms over what was once Ankara forestland. It’s a new presidential palace complex, with at least 1,100 rooms and an official price tag of $615 million — although critics suggest both figures are probably higher.

The person in my life with impeccable taste in music turned me onto James Vincent McMorrow and I’m loving what I’ve heard so far. I leave you with “Cavalier.” I won’t tell you my favorite of his songs so far, though. That’s just for me and mine.

Roxane Gay is the editor of The Butter.


44 Comments

    1. allanaaa +26

      Not even gonna click that link. Just gonna give you my congratulations, solidarity, and sorrow for the future of mankind.

    2. samburgers +65

      oh i see reddit is wearing its best 18-year-old-white-affluent-suburban-white-guy-in-freshman-philosophy costume

      it is very convincing but a little 2005 for my tastes

    3. zachariahary +20

      Started reading that thread. Then started singing a song in my head that just goes, “People bein’ shitty/ people bein’ shitty/ people bein’ oh so very, very shitty.”
      I think it’s going to be my theme music for engaging with the Internet from now on.

      Congrats on your new found Reddit fame, may it bring you untold fortune. Or at least not motivate you to withdraw from society and go live in the woods.

    4. annieleeroth +7

      Ew, those people are the worst! But I’m glad to see the link to your excellent article, which I hadn’t read before. You articulate my thoughts on CAH much more clearly than I’ve been able to in the past.

    5. coolniceghost +17

      Congrats on them assuming you’re a man! Means they didn’t disagree with you that much!

      :/

      <3

      1. iosognodisonno +3

        I really relate to your article. I’m sure there was a time when I found the game really fun and hilarious, but as it’s been pulled out at recent gatherings I’ve realized I’m kind of over it and tempted to roll my eyes a little. And I always end up with a card or two that just will never be funny. Seriously, who’s gonna laugh at Hurricane Katrina in any context?

        Now I’m kind of sad that no one wants to play Apples to Apples anymore 🙁

    6. blunderbusst +3

      Jaya, THANK YOU for writing about CAH. I’ve been trying to articulate why the game makes me uncomfortable, and your article nailed it (particularly Cisky’s quote re: “enlightenment”). Anyway, just wanted to offer a heartfelt, enthusiastic YES and some more thanks. Thanks!

      p.s. Sorry that Reddit is a sucky place sometimes.

  2. ppyajunebug +23

    If you like that piece in The Atlantic, you MUST read “Packing for Mars” by Mary Roach if you haven’t already. It’s one of my favorite works of non-fiction ever written and answers the age old question of how you poop in space.

    1. ToastiewithCheese +15

      I loved the detail about how the peeing implements came in three sizes: L, XL, and XXL. Because apparently being an astronaut doesn’t mean you can’t be insecure about your anatomy… Ooh, and that they had to test pooping on the toilets in one of those planes that creates weightlessness for 22 seconds at a time.

    2. aravisthequeen +9

      God, yes. I laughed so much during that book, far more than any of her other books–and Mary Roach is a terrific, engaging writer. She visited a practice space toilet!

    3. actualmeg +6

      YES I came down to the comments mostly to recommend this. It’s amazing. I love how she is totally unafraid to ask the fascinating but deeply unscientific questions that will inevitably occur to readers but that most Serious Academic Folk would not touch with a ten-foot pole.

    4. drladybusiness +5

      I refer to this book all the time! Also I am using a quote from it as the epigraph to a poetry sequence about how space wants to murder you. I’m a little obsessed with space.

    5. spiffygrits +6

      Asked what I wanted to do with my life a very few years back, I thought for a moment and answered that I want to be Mary Roach.

      I am terrified of space. It is one of my deepest fears. Everything about space travel frightens me, and despite that, I read and loved Packing for Mars. Mary Roach makes space as interesting and not-scary (or appropriately scary) as I’ve ever found it to be.

  3. ramina +12

    My mother was 56 when her first novel was published, I think? It was a long uphill battle to publish, though, and she’d been trying since I was a child, so easily in her mid-40s when she started writing seriously again.

    Tossing another link in, an article about the homeless motels in Seaside Heights, NJ. A few of the people they talk to are sex offenders and possible rape TW.

  4. tekkah +19

    I’m not sure how it happened but when I clicked on the ‘read more’ for this post the first time I was taken to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and for a split second I just sat there staring at it like “what happened to the Toast?” before I realized it was probably a bizarre misdirect due to ads and load time or something. I need to wake up.

    1. tekkah +6

      The Radium girls are so fascinating! Meanwhile someone on my twitter feed is whining up a giant storm because NPR didn’t say she died in March or something. As if highlighting the Radium girls is a bad thing because it wasn’t done IMMEDIATELY upon this woman’s death? I don’t get it. It’s fascinating!

      1. bibliobotic +14

        I’m pretty sure they actually did do a post on it back when she died, just not a bit on All Things Considered. I feel like I remember reading about her earlier this year.

        ANYWAY, ATC always does this end of year recap of people who’ve died?? So like?? YOU MUST NOT BE A REAL NPR FAN, whining twitter person.

    2. cuminafterall +12

      Listened to this last night. When they got to the part about the women suing to pay for their own funerals, I started crying big old sloppy tears.

      (Reply to Jaya’s post about the radium girls)

      1. fakely_mctest +2

        Can highly recommend Deborah Blum’s The Poisoner’s Handbook about turn of the century life in NYC, the first chemical forensics lab, and a truly science-minded city coroner (they were cushy appointments mostly prior to that time). There’s a section about the radium girls that’s fascinating. PBS did a documentary version that you can watch online.

        Also available is Radium City in its entirety on YouTube. I’d just assumed that the radium dial company…stopped using radium once a rich person died and they had to deal with all those lawsuits, but they just up and moved to the midwest. Capitalism is horrifying.

        (I may have gone through a brief radium girls research period some years ago…)

  6. Leanna +7

    Pictures of gorgeous pastries and a cheering list of writers who made their debuts not at a precocious age but a little later in life – could you have given us a better start to the day? I think not! (And now, off to the local bakery for a ginger lemon scone and then to the movies to see Wild…)

  7. allofthewhine +9

    Ah, Roxane! The Wire is so good. I wish I could watch it again for the first time. The hardest part is trying to avoid spoilers in the age of the internet while still trying to fully understand what’s going on and how things work. If you can help it, try not to google around too much.

    1. CultofGozer +4

      SPOILER***

      I got spoiled for the culmination of Omar’s storyline. I will not forgive, and I will not forget.

  8. aravisthequeen +17

    1100 rooms is some Versailles-level shit. And it’s ugly! So ugly! It looks like the police building in my parents’ suburb! His family residence has 250 rooms! You’d have to have an entire fleet of servants outfitted with a regiment’s worth of labour-saving equipment. And once you finished washing all the windows you’d have to start over again! And the floors!

    (HI TOAST I’M BACK! I was gone all last week so I have no idea what happened but now I’M BACK and I have a WHOLE WEEK OFF WORK!)

    2. pretty_monster +3

      +1 so ugly.

      and not only that but gorgeous (and protected) green space was destroyed to make room for that eyesore. just… eew.

  9. ToastiewithCheese +9

    That Wild review was really interesting, and it led me to the writer’s review of Under the Skin, which articulated a lot of what didn’t quite sit right with me about that movie, especially how easily femininity seems to come to Scarlett’s character.

    1. ann1011 +4

      Which is definitely not the case in the book, it’s worth noting. I had my own issues with the book, but it was wholly different when it came to that.

  10. katenepveu +21

    I didn’t see this on a quick skim of the open thread, so:

    There are not one but two Two Monks fanfics in Yuletide this year (Yuletide is an annual rare-fandom fanfic exchange; fics are posted on Dec. 25th and authors are revealed on Jan. 1). Two Monks Invent Mr. Darcy is a very excellent pastiche, and Who Are Best Friends is a tiny bit of adorableness.

  11. leaping_rabbit +7

    The movie “The One I Love” came up in my Netflix recommendations yesterday, and the reviews were intriguing and I like Elisabeth Moss, so I watched it last night and am recommending it here! It’s a movie you want to watch without knowing much about it. The end doesn’t quite live up to the beginning, but it’s still an enjoyably Twilight Zone-esque little film.

  12. safvn +1

    I think I’m going to get to go to either one or two of those pastry shops this year, and I am THRILLED. Thank you for a very good link roundup!

  13. beakbreath +23

    YOU GUYS: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/argentinas-…

    Can somebody from Argentina ring in on this? I desperately want to believe this is all true. This is the greatest tradition I’ve ever heard of. (The headlines I’ve seen for this story imply that he’s in danger of becoming a werewolf because he’s Jewish, when in fact it’s newsworthy because previously non-Catholics haven’t been included in the state’s lycanthropy prevention program.)

    ETA: they become werewolves when they’re 13, WEREWOLF BAR MITZVAH spooky scary

  14. omonrawr +10

    In less shitty reddit news, the sub r/books is hosting an AMA with Margaret Atwood in about an hour. So, if any Toasties have questions for Atwood she’s going to start answering at 2pm EST today. I can post a link if anyone can’t find it — I’ve just left it out to try to avoid possibly getting caught in a filter or something. This is actually my first Toast comment (bun in the oven? bread under the burner?) so I’m not sure how it works.

  15. Ethylbenzene +7

    I just read this and I’m SO SAD you guys. GWS will be ending. I mean, yay for awesome women going on to produce more awesome stuff, but but but like, Clarice and Joshua like JUST got together and what about Jamie and Erin and what about Hazel?! Wahhhhh….

    ETA: I totally do know how to use the a href= tag I swear. I’m just too heartbroken to type!!!!

  16. smoked_salmon +10

    Has anyone seen this? Evidence of spinster witches in Cornwall, practicing at least until the 1970s. The dream is alive.

    1. torrents

      I am watching The Wire for the first time and it has mostly been a devastating trauma but the show is excellent, so very excellent.