ESSAYDon’t Criticize What You Can’t Understand: Dylan's Nobel PrizeM.G. Poe

ESSAYDon’t Criticize What You Can’t Understand: Dylan's Nobel PrizeM.G. Poe

M.G. Poe

Given the escalating, bitterly divided and mystifying socio-political climate in the United States right now, it is somehow fitting that rounding out the ambiguous and wholly controversial state of our present reality, the Swedish Academy has chosen to present the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature to the enigmatic, oft-times reclusive American folk-singer/songwriter, beat poet and novelist (yes, he has published!) Bob Dylan. It is the first time in the history of the award that it has been given to a pop musician for his body of work, begging us all, especially those of us in the literary world, to bend the arc of our moral universe toward redefining the boundaries of what is literature.

TRAVELWhy I Do Not Love TravelJennifer Koiter

Drunk Monkeys

The first time I got sick in India, I refused to believe that all I had was a case of common Delhi belly. I was certain something in my body had gone horribly wrong. The spasms of vomiting, the diarrhea, the waves of exhaustion that grounded me in my body and made it impossible to hold a thought in my head: how could all that come from a dollop of coconut chutney on my lunchtime dosa, or a plate of cut cucumbers at a five-star hotel, the one place where raw food is supposed to be safe?