Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love, died last week, so this is a bit late, but Vogue reprinted a magnificent essay by Dunn on the bad girl. “Women who pay their own rent don’t have to be nice,” Dunn wrote. “They can afford to be real.”

The Belle Jar has A List Of Things In Literature, Music and Art That Are Actually Metaphors For Women, including “The sea is a good metaphor for women because it’s always wrecking shit that men love” and “Look, I don’t know who decided that cats are feminine and dogs are masculine, but someone did and that idea has stuck and now we all just have to live with it.”

At LA Review of Books, Graham Daseler writes about whether there has ever been a truly great Hollywood Novel.

The Times Literary Supplement writes about the benefits of pretentiousness: “cultural eclecticism, and an attendant willingness to take risks even if it makes one look foolish or over the top, has always been an essential driving mechanism in the arts.”