Austin Allen
Austin Allen is the editor of the Poetry Genius project at Rap Genius, as well as a former editor at Big Think. He holds an MFA in poetry from Johns Hopkins University, where he has also taught as a creative writing instructor. He lives in New York City and can be reached at austin [at] bigthink [dot] com.
The Joy of Antique Wikipedia Entries
Wikipedia is universally relied on and universally distrusted. On the one hand, it’s a stunning repository of knowledge that has rendered the World Books of my not-so-distant childhood utterly obsolete; […]
Jane Smiley vs. Shakespeare: “A Thousand Acres” Turns 20
Earlier this year, novelist Jane Smiley contributed an entertaining and provocative piece to Big Think’s “How to Think Like Shakespeare” series. In it she wrote that while composing A Thousand […]
A Baseball Book for Big Thinkers
Last month the Boston Red Sox dropped out of playoff contention, losing their wild-card berth to the Tampa Bay Rays after leading them by nine games three and a half […]
Tomas Tranströmer Wins Nobel Literature Prize; Somewhere Philip Roth Weeps Quietly
Today Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Swedish winner since 1974 and the first umlauted winner since Herta Müller in 2009. The citation mentions […]
Which American Writer Most Deserves the Nobel?
If past trends are any guide, this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature will go to a post-postmodern Francophone novelist from a forgotten duchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And yet partisans […]
Does Great Science Require Great Science Fiction?
I enjoyed this recent article by Neal Stephenson in the World Policy Journal, but I think he and his editors may have buried their lede. Stephenson, a bestselling science fiction […]
Can an Online Bookstore Be a Community Bookstore?
Is the frequently drawn distinction between online bookstores (efficient, convenient, innovative) and traditional bookstores (old-fashioned, communal, curated) a false one? This fall, Molly Gaudry and her fellow staff at The […]
What Does the MFA Boom Mean for Print Books?
Here’s a question that doesn’t get asked often enough in the “death of print” debate. If print books are limping toward extinction, why do so many writers—even the youngest, Web-savviest […]
In Memoriam: Michael S. Hart, E-Book Pioneer
The book world was saddened last week by the death of Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, at the age of 64. Project Gutenberg represented the first significant attempt […]
Centaurs, Ligers, Doctor-Poets, and Other Hybrid Breeds
Guest Post by Jenna Le. Jenna Le has worked as a physician in Queens and the Bronx, New York City. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Six Rivers, was published by New York […]
F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Art of Drunkenness
Earlier this summer, a selection of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most alcohol-soaked writings was published under the title On Booze. A distillation (so to speak) of his essay collection The Crack-Up, […]
Should Richard Dawkins Take Up Novel Writing?
James Wood is probably the best literary critic working today. If he wrote a review of the phone book, I would read it. This week, though, I find myself disagreeing […]
A Few Good Hurricane Poems
Writing in The New Yorker’s Book Bench this week, Macy Halford has curated a selection of “Six Shorts to Read During a Hurricane.” The novels, essays, and poems excerpted include […]
Roland Emmerich’s Shakespeare Conspiracy Movie: Woefully Lacking in Accuracy, Aliens
Shakespeare’s had a tough year. It’s not enough that anthropologists want to shoot lasers at his skeleton to find out if he smoked weed. Now the guy who directed Independence […]
Amazon Publishing Leaps Forward; HarperCollins Smells a Monopoly
For Amazon, a publishing program is the next logical step in its long-term business strategy. For the rest of the book industry, it’s cause for a bad case of nerves. […]
Is “Mad Men” the Greatest Novel of Our Time?
I ask the above question at least halfway in earnest, and also as an excuse to write about Mad Men. (The season premiere has been delayed by contract disputes, so […]
Is Time Travel Just a Literary Fantasy?
Einstein “finally concluded that time travel might be inherent in his equations,” but dismissed the notion “on physical grounds."
If “We Can’t Teach Students to Love Reading,” What Can We Teach?
Is it true that deep, sustained reading is an experience only a small minority of people “naturally” enjoy? And if so, does it follow that since “some current college students […]
The Pale-Bearded Ghost of John Berryman Haunts Us Still
This winter, John Berryman will have been dead for forty years. That figure strikes me as strange; in many ways Berryman’s poetic voice still sounds like that of a fearless […]
The Exasperating Maleness of Long Novels
The literary essay I’ve enjoyed most this year has been “The Stockholm Syndrome Theory of Long Novels,” published by The Millions back in May. In it, Mark O’Connell argues that […]
If Anyone Can Save Libraries, Margaret Atwood Can
Bravo to Canadian literary legend Margaret Atwood for waging online warfare against library closings this week. When Toronto councillor Doug Ford floated some made-up statistics about the number of libraries […]
Borders, Revisited: Was Their Death Really Amazon’s Fault?
My post attributing the death of Borders to Amazon’s sales tax advantage raised some hackles among commenters and fellow bloggers alike. Matthew Nisbet over at Age of Engagement countered that the reasons […]
Save a Library, Save Democracy
Earlier this summer I was feeling down in the dumps about libraries. I was spending the month of June in Flushing, Queens, a melting-pot neighborhood where the local library bustles […]
Why We’ll Never Escape “Catch-22”
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22turns fifty this year, and like its hero Yossarian, it seems destined to survive for the long haul. It’s the best kind of literary paradox: a classic that […]
Emily Dickinson, Erotic Grief Counselor
Most people know that Emily Dickinson was a great poet, but it takes a deep plunge into her collected poems to realize just how staggeringly great she was. Usually represented […]
Thanks to Amazon, a World Without Borders
So Borders is gone for good, its last four hundred stores scheduled to vanish within weeks. As mourners rush to the liquidation sales, it’s worth pausing to ask: what the […]
Life Redefined: “The Devil’s Dictionary” Turns 100
A century after its publication as The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce’s comic lexicon remains a beautifully nasty piece of work. Though it’s a work of satire first and foremost, its […]
What’s the Future of Book Design? (Part 2)
As print sales decline and new e-platforms pop up everywhere, the future of the book has become a source of widespread speculation. In my previous post I asked: what’s the […]
What’s the Future of Book Design? (Part 1)
With e-books now outselling print titles on Amazon.com, the book business is undergoing its most radical transformation in living memory. Everyone and their literate cat has an opinion about what the […]
Much Ado About Drug-Testing Shakespeare’s Corpse
“Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be he who moves my bones,” Shakespeare’s gravestone famously proclaims. Anthropologist Francis Thackeray, the man currently petitioning the Anglican […]