These days, I always feel a bit like I’m scrambling, trying to write and cover my freelance copyediting work and maintain some semblance of a life, but I actually have links this week—mostly music-related, for some reason.
- First, the nonmusical: Michael Cunningham’s two-part New Yorker account of being a Pulitzer fiction jurist this past year isn’t exactly satisfying (the award ultimately was withheld by the committee) but it’s interesting, if only as an account of how we assess literature.
- Somehow I never get bored with this kind of thing: A law professor spends nearly twenty pages (with footnotes!) breaking down the Fourth Amendment issues raised by Jay-Z’s 2004 classic “99 Problems.” It is awesome. I mean, seriously: I read nearly twenty pages of a law journal. (Slate has a summary, but you read the whole thing! It’s surprisingly comprehensible and even funny, in a dry, nerdy sort of way.)
- This story from Boston Magazine about the agony of high-level auditions for the Boston Symphony Orchestra is heartbreaking—and it makes me so, so glad I decided not to pursue that sort of thing. I don’t have it in me. (Via The Hairpin.)
- At NPR’s Monkey See blog, Linda Holmes has a sweet little essay—complete with Venn diagram!—about the not-entirely-complete overlap between the things we love and the things we’re proud to endorse. Plus, the video she posts is adorable.
- And with that essay in mind, I’m also linking to AV Club‘s list of “songs we want to live inside”—almost entirely because they kick off with Jimmy Fallon and the Roots’ sing-along to Carly Rae Jepsen’s infectious, inescapable “Call Me Maybe.” I, too, can’t get over how cute the video is, with everyone grinning and banging away on their elementary school instruments. The world of that cover definitely looks like a happy place.
Much Review About Nothing 