“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.” - Charles Bukowski
Source: theladyfreak.com
Where Fitzgerald casts feeling across the brow of novelistic self-consciousness, Wallace revels in oiling and refashioning the squeaky wheel of novel-ness, to arrive at what the enterprise represents at its core, the entire literary lineage. The lit marathon tempts a similarly immense question by bringing the reader out of seclusion. Of the way it wraps around us, exhausts our capacity to pay attention while also abiding our coming and goings — we can drop in, drop out, and when we get back, chances are good it will still be there — the poet Susan Terris, echoing Tillman, reflects, “I guess the singular joy of the marathon reading is being read aloud to, which most of us love — exactly in the same way we did when we were children.
The Millions : Miles to Go: Notes on Marathon Reading
A great piece on marathon readings by Jeff Price; honored to have our DFW readathon included.
(via wordbrooklyn)
(via wordbrooklyn)
Source: themillions.com
This post is part of an week-long mini-series celebrating National Short Story Month, continuing with The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg.
It’s difficult to think how very many people now know who Deborah Eisenberg is from a cameo appearance last month on Gossip Girl, but have likely never read one of her stories. Their souls are poorer for it.
Deborah Eisenberg is in a very small group of artists whose work does things that no one else’s does. She writes short stories—only short stories—and when we collected all 27 of them (written over a 30 year period) in one volume in 2010 it was awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Her stories are quite long, often 25-40 pages, and in them she packs all the characters and incident of an entire novel. One is half-tempted to ask: who needs novels with short stories like these?
One of my favorites is “Transactions in a Foreign Currency,” and its opening is one of my favorite paragraphs in literature:
“I had lit a fire in my fireplace, and I’d poured out two coffees and two brandies, and I was settling down on the sofa next to a man who had taken me out to dinner when Ivan called after more than six months. I turned with the receiver to the wall as I absorbed the fact of Ivan’s voice, and when I glanced back at the man on my sofa, he seemed like a scrap of paper, or the handle from a broken cup, or a single rubber band—a thing that has become dislodged from its rightful place and intrudes on one’s consciousness two or three or many times before one understands that it is just a thing best thrown away.”
Source: picadorbookroom
In college, one of my English professors threatened to institute a “sorry jar” policy for the females in his classes. Like the “swear jar,” the sorry jar would have required a monetary donation any time a female spoke in class and, at some point in her talking, apologized. Apparently his female students—strong, smart women in a top liberal arts college—often (unconsciously, accidentally) apologized, just for expressing their ideas.
In 2011, The Atlantic published 235 pieces men and 91 by women. Harper’s: 141 men, 42 women. The London Review of Books: 504 men, 117 women.
VIDA: Woman in Literary Arts compiles the above numbers every year, one of their many efforts to explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women. Their first annual fundraiser, hosted by Riverhead Books, will be June 18, 2012, in Brooklyn. I suggest you attend—not only to drink unlimited beer and to mingle with Emma Straub but to support this organization and the women writers out there who, every day, are fighting to be heard.
Source: booksmatter
You, Alone: THE VISIBLE MAN Video Contest.
What do you do when you’re alone? What if someone is watching?
In Chuck Klosterman’s The Visible Man, a therapist is contacted by a man claiming to be a scientist who’s stolen “cloaking” technology from the government. When he makes himself invisible, he observes random individuals alone, living their daily lives. But why? To celebrate the paperback, Scribner is giving you the chance to win an entire Chuck Klosterman library and have your winning video screened at Chuck’s June 7th signing at Book Court in Brooklyn! Just submit a video here by May 30th that answers the question: What do you do when you’re alone? What if someone is watching?
To inspire you:
Source: scribnerbooks
Alexander McCall Smith gives advice to aspiring writers as part of our Writers on Writing series.
Source: pantheonbooks
The future of ideas.
No one thinks of Greenland
sorting things out.
The elephant vanishes.
We
look to windward,
carve the sky.
(in order: Lawrence Lessig, John Griesemer, Bower and Star, Murakami, Zamyatin, Iain M. Banks, Alexander Jabokov)
Source: notyourastronaut
My go at a book spine poem -
Green girl,
Stop what you’re doing and read this,
True things about me,
Who was changed and who was dead,
Remembrance of things past,
The final problem,
No easy fix,
The sense of an ending.
Source: othernotebooksareavailable
