Lit-Links

I’m working on a post I hope to get up in the next day or two. In the meantime, here are some links that caught my attention, with some personal explication:

I love the blogosphere busy-ness, self-publication as the glorious act of splashing around in one’s own pool, inviting neighbors and passers-by to hop in or ignore, as they see fit. But I also, on occasion, succumb to Pro Writer’s Envy. Every once in a while I’ll pick up a stray issue of something prestige — a New Yorker, say, or a BOMB magazine — and I’ll read it, and enjoy it, and I’ll think, “Wow. I really wish I was in that tree-house.” And, for my tastes, no tree-house has a more coveted vista than n+1.

Currently, club-members have started a ruckus outside the tree-house by framing a polar debate: “MFA vs NYC.” If, like me, you reflexively consider this a false dichotomy, be assured: there are flying elbows in this melee that will strike a vulnerable spot for just about any reader. Leslie Jamison attends the fracas and considers, among other issues, writerly authority. Michael Bourne focuses on the most pragmatic concern: how does either side make a living?

“Screw NYC: Buenos Aires is the place to be.” Tangential to n+1 matters: New York magazine (another tree-house — with an open bar!) profiles n+1 founder, certified hep-cat and unabashed Marxist Benjamin Kunkel over here. Take-away quote: “Is the growth of the radical left a cause for hope or just a mark of accumulating despair?”

And, finally, just because: over at the VICE tree-house (um, what's that smell?) Danny McDonald prompts some Chuck Bukowski recollections from one-time muse (and several-times girlfriend) Linda King. I like that McDonald throws in Roger Ebert's assessment of Buk. “Statistical aberration,” could sum up just about any writer who grabs and holds the spotlight, really — regardless of MFA or chosen city locale.

"You know what 'MFA' really stands for, don't you?"