On her new track “Flawless,” Beyoncé samples Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author, most recently, of Americanah. The sample, taken from Adichie’s Ted talk, states: “We should all be feminists,” and makes up most of the song’s second verse.
As the deluge of end-of-year best-of lists continues, it becomes easy to wonder if we should care about any of them. At the New Yorker, Elif Batuman helpfully explains, in convenient list form, that we should.
Hate-reading our way through 2013: Obamacare is Obama’s Katrina, Iraq; Hipsturbia; Mr. 300 Sandwiches; etc.
Gallerist reports on a dust-up over sacked freelancers at Blouin Media, publisher of Art + Auction, Modern Painters, and Artinfo.com.
Toronto’s Globe and Mailprofiles a new series of slim books by Melville House, the Neversink Library, inspired by “Lawrence Weschler’s call for ‘investigative poets’ and ‘lyrical journalists’ to create nonfiction with the imaginative dexterity of a novel.”