This Week in Writing

• On March 28^th, Barry Harbaugh wrote “Yes, Book Editors Edit,” his response to the buzzing essay collection “MFA vs NYC.” The collection, published by n+1, features work from writers, professors, publicists, agents—but no book editors.
• Linton Weeks at NPR has written an essay titled “Vladimir Putin is Right Out Of A Russian Novel.” In the piece, Weeks posits that Putin, in his reign, “has chosen [to follow] the Dostoevskian tradition.”
• A printed edition of Wikipedia is in the works—and it would span more than one million pages in total. Seems like a worthless idea to me. Listen to NPR's talking points (3/30) here.
• On April 1^st, Gmail celebrated its 10 year anniversary. Here, Time's Harry McCracken rehashes the service's revolutionary history.
• In The Believer's March/April issue, Anisse Gross interviews filmmaker/screenwriter Mary Harron about the role of women in film. Gross discusses her writing process and her views of modern feminism. Gross wrote and directed several films, including I Shot Andy Warhol, and American Psycho.
• The Boston Review posted “Cloud of Mexico Pork” this week (4/1), a poem from Robert Pinksy. The piece is made up of a list of “trigger words” which government surveillance teams use to monitor citizens' web searches.
• The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum explores the ethics behind TV writing in her piece “The Great Divide” (4/3). The article focuses on the polarizing humor of “All in the Family,” recalling: “One side felt that the show satirized bigotry; the other argued that it was bigotry, and that all those vaudevillian yuks and awws were merely camouflage for Archie’s ugly words.” Nussbaum's piece also questions the show's impact on modern sitcom writing.   

~Sophie Opich