| Did Scarlett Thomas Miss Her Chance? |
[10 Sep 2015|03:00pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/09/british_novelist_scarlett_thomas_book_the_seed_collectors_is_unavailable.html The media loves publishing’s Cinderella stories, whether it’s single mom J.K. Rowling scribbling her way to fame and fortune in an Edinburgh coffee shop, or a literary novelist like Cormac McCarthy whose decades of hard work and modest acclaim suddenly blossom into a series of best-sellers. But what about the many gifted writers for whom the stars don’t miraculously align, the ones apparently headed for glory who somehow get sidetracked, who publish the wrong book at the right time (or vice-versa)? And what marvelous books do readers miss out on when a literary career falters?
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| Deep Pain |
[10 Sep 2015|03:53pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/09/deep_lane_by_mark_doty_reviewed.html “Beauty that does not disguise the wound,” Mark Doty writes in Deep Lane, his ninth book of poems, “but reads through to the lack it marks.” It’s the opening of "Ars Poetica: 14th Street Gym,” a short, graceful poem, just 10 four-beat lines, in which Doty describes a one-armed man doing chin-ups and the tattoo covering (but not obscuring) the joint where there is no arm.
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| Shock Therapy |
[10 Sep 2015|07:07pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/09/obama_should_invest_in_public_electric_vehicle_chargers.html As I steered a BMW i3 loaner into a Northwest Washington, D.C., parking garage, I glanced at the time: 30 minutes before drinks. The electric car’s battery was almost dead, but I could fix that—this garage had a high-power charging station. It could add about 60 miles of juice in that half-hour. I pushed a button to unlatch the car’s charging port, jumped out, and gathered the hefty electrical cable. Then I reached for my credit card and looked for a swiper affixed to the charging box. Instead, I found a small decal explaining that I needed a membership to charge at an eVgo station. Translation: No matter how much I was willing to pay to charge at that moment—and I was willing to pay quite a bit—I couldn’t. And I found myself thinking that this eVgo charger was an apt metaphor for the Obama administration’s policy on electric vehicles.
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