Welcome back to The Span, Defector’s best and only non-sports newsletter. This week, we’ve got Sabrina Imbler considering the political implications of Hoppers, Jonah Walters reviewing a former Survivor contestant’s debut novel, a meditation on the anti-human motivations behind AI “actors,” and an interview with Namwali Serpell, author of On Morrison. Plus, the results of the first round of Middlemarch Madness voting!
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Here are some cool blogs from Defector:
Dam It All To Hell
Hoppers will probably make you cry, but it fails to accept that the real villain of the movie should be cartoon Gavin Newsom.
Stephen Fishbach’s Reality-TV Novel Is More Reality TV Than Novel
Why write a book at all if all you’re interested in is television?
Namwali Serpell On Understanding Toni Morrison The Author, Not The Icon
A wide-ranging conversation with the author and critic.
Here are some cool blogs from elsewhere on the internet:
Slate: “The Worst Neighbor Ever”
He moved to the block promising a new bookstore. He brought a whole lot more than that. Now no one is quite sure how to describe what happened outside Quirky Books.
Granta: Transference in the Afternoon
‘According to the documents, they began the meetings by talking and concluded by having sex.’
Jesse Barron on the dissolution of a therapeutic relationship.
Middlemarch Madness Enters the Elite Eight Round!
After a week of competition, the latest round of the Middlemarch Madness bracket has been decided. Some books like Middlemarch (1) dominated so handily—92 percent of the vote—that you feel a little bad for the competition. Poor McTeague (16), we hardly knew you! Moby Dick (2) also destroyed House of the Seven Gables, 84 percent to 16 percent. But it would not be a March bracket competition without a few surprises. Underdogs The Awakening (10) and David Copperfield (13) snuck their way into the Elite Eight. Will they go all the way? Only you can decide.
Readers decide which four books will survive into the Final Four, so vote early and often. If you’re in line, stay in line. You can vote here.
Soon, we will know how much we’ve managed to rig this thing by calling it Middlemarch Madness!
