Maggie Smith
Mix Tape: Literary Crimes
Andrew Scott responds to the “ladder-climbing” and “posturing” behind nasty reviews and other writer-on-writer crimes. When an English professor wrote to Flannery O’Connor and asked her to explain one of her short stories, he deserved this response, which includes: “If teachers…
Mix Tape: Cover Me
Is social media turning readers into yes-men/women? If you follow “the literary Twitter- or blogospheres, you’ll be positively besieged by amiability, by a relentless enthusiasm that might have you believing that all new books are wonderful and that every writer…
Mix Tape: Poetry Gold (and Silver…and Bronze)
Has poetry changed the world? Has increasing literacy been at all responsible for decreasing brutality—and, if so, “what attributes of literature can explain this? Three come immediately to mind: its invitation to empathy, its reliance on deliberative thought, and its…
Mix Tape: From the Mouths of Babes…and Speakers Sewn into Lace
A six-year-old girl looks at classic book covers and guesses what the books are about. “It’s about the desert. It’s a mystery about the desert. You know, I think it’s actually about a slot machine that is lost in the…
Mix Tape: Tacos, Tears, and the State of American Poetry
A Bukowski-Sondheim musical? Though the combination sounds questionable, so does the Taco Bell taco in a Doritos shell…and apparently that’s selling pretty well. Abby Mims went into an MFA program with great expectations but met her literary nemesis there. “In…
