The People v. O.J. Simpson Will Be With Us Forever
Vinson Cunningham | The New Yorker
“We enter now into the myth’s adolescence, the time of miracles and hoaxes, retellings and revisions. Think of the knife as the fraudulent tooth or fingernail of a popular saint, and of The People v. O.J., perhaps, as a crucial near-contemporary codex, an early attempt to force the imperatives of art—narrative, coherence, harmony of action, and meaning—onto the strange and unsettling tragedy that was the truth.”
Move Over, Rat Pack and Brat Pack: Here Comes the Snap Pack
Katherine Rosman | The New York Times
“Even as they grasp that their postings can draw scorn, the Snap Pack seems unable to relinquish the habit of social media, and the illusion of image control it affords. ‘I look good in pictures I take of myself,’ Ms. Matisse said as the group settled in for dinner at Vandal.”
How Not to Talk About African Literature
Ainehi Edoro | The Guardian
“The history of modern African fiction is essentially 100 years of branding disaster. In marketing African fiction, the conventional practice among publishers both in Africa and the West has been to simply tag a novel to a social issue. ‘Such and such a novel explores colonialism.’ Done ... African fiction is packaged and circulated, bought and sold not on the basis of its aesthetic value but of its thematic preoccupation.”