Every page of David Wojnarowicz’s journals, covering the years 1971-1991, has been scanned and is available for online perusal at NYU’s Fales Library website. From a supremely unfun outward bound trip he took as a teenager (“I learned the first steps in rock climbing. The man who teaches it hit me on the top of the head for giving a wrong signal at the wrong time. I was really pissed off”), up through heartbreaking confessions near the end of his life (“My life is no longer filled with poetry and dreams. I can smell rust in the air. . .” ), the journals make riveting reading. For more on Wojnarowicz, read Luc Sante’s review of Cynthia Carr’s biography, Fire in the Belly.
In a long rant in Out Magazine pegged to the coming out of NBA player Jason Collins, novelist and lightning rod Bret Easton Ellis went after what he describes as "gay self-patronization in the media." He went on to critique the gay-friendly media for celebrating “the Gay Man as Magical Elf, who whenever he comes out appears before us as some kind of saintly E.T. whose sole purpose is to be put in the position of reminding us only about Tolerance." It’s worth remembering that Ellis was invited to GLAAD’s annual awards ceremony in April, and then disinvited after referring to the TV show Glee as “a puddle of HIV.”
A German labor union has called on the nine thousand Amazon employees in Germany to go on strike in order to protest the company’s refusal to implement collective bargaining agreements. And in other Amazon news, the retail giant has launched its own virtual currency to pay for apps and presumably e-books: Amazon Coins.
The trailer for James Franco’s adaptation of Faulkner’s 1930 novel As I Lay Dying is now up online. The film will screen in the “Un Certain Regard” category at Cannes this year.
Never mind the neuronovel, we’ve now progressed to the neurohumanities, and specifically “neuroscience centers with specialties in humanities hybrids,” which are cropping up at universities across the country.
Among the many excellent takeaways from the Women in Criticism panel that took place last week at Housing Works last week with Parul Seghal, Michelle Dean, Miriam Markowitz, Michelle Orange, Ruth Franklin, Kate Bolick, and Laura Miller is the following piece of advice: “pro tip for young men: No more pitching Martin Amis reviews. Full stop.”
