Broken Spines: Literary Links

Had Quasimodo lived his life in a dark, mirrorless sanctuary there's a good chance he'd have considered him self the Paul Newman of Notre-Dame. But, alas, it was not to be. In that spirit, we emerge once again this week, a self-assured Rock Hudson of literary criticism only to find ourselves surrounded by an internet of veritable Steve McQueens. (This is an extended metaphor about how other sites also do good work and the following are examples of that)

The folks at http://galacticjourney.org are live-blogging classic science-fiction

When someone asks you why we bother sending craft into space, you can point to TIROS’ picture, the likes of which will soon replace the crude line drawings we currently find in our newspapers."

Melissa Broder’s contribution — ‘R Minus Seven (poems for Oneohtrix Point Never’s R Plus Seven)’ — to Rhizome‘s ‘Poetry as Practice’ exhibition

Now I make love with no body

I do it with my halo chanting

Set me alive and fucking

A boy attached to no reality

He who needs no milk or punishing

He who will never abandon

At Dazed Stuart Hammond relays Tom McCarthy’s words on where we are and where we’re going

"Where you actually are doesn’t really matter anymore, at least in our developed, elite parts of the world. In London, New York, Sao Paolo, Oslo, people are Skyping with people in Oslo, Sao Paolo, New York, or London. Everything is happening ‘in between,’ everything is in relay."

Literary Editor Saeed Jones talks to Electric Literature; plants hitherto near-unbelievable idea that BuzzFeed isn’t just a revolving shitshow of ultra-LOLs

"The fellowship is just the beginning of what I really like to think of as a kind of literary movement coming to BuzzFeed. In addition to the fellowship program, I’ll be launching a literary magazine — about a year from now — as well as a reading and salon series. We’ll also be hosting creative writing workshops."

Medium peek under Cormac McCarthy’s sweat-drenched felt hat at the original drafts for Blood Meridian

"As he found his voice for this new direction in his writing, the originals read more like cheap westerns than the epic-biblical masterpiece that Harold Bloom would praise as a “universal tragedy of blood.”"

Follow @theQuietusBooks on Twitter to read things we have written and be pointed in the direction of more good things we haven’t

The Quietus Digest

Sign up for our free Friday email newsletter.

Support The Quietus

Our journalism is funded by our readers. Become a subscriber today to help champion our writing, plus enjoy bonus essays, podcasts, playlists and music downloads.

Support & Subscribe Today