- Did you read a short story today? He did.
- Samantha Hunt scribbles on bar napkins.
- Deborah Eisenberg not only writes great stories; she also gives a great interview.
- A Peter Markus story – free! – at failbetter.com.
- A Ben Fountain story – free! – at The Barcelona Review.
- Bookslut chats up Elizabeth Crane.
- Death is dead (via Conversational Reading).
Short Story Week Links
The Fantastic Flying Books
Have you watched “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” yet? You should. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
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A Tale of Two Daredevils
In The Guardian, our own Mark O’Connell reviews TransAtlantic, the new novel by Year in Reading alum Colum McCann. If you’ll recall, we featured the book in our Great 2013 Book Preview.
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The Translation Life Cycle
Recommended Viewing: What actually happens when a book gets translated? Publishing Trendsetter has an infographic of a translated book’s life cycle complete with interviews with a foreign rights agent and a translator.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Gyasi; Alam; Schine; Rowley; King
Out this week: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi; Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam; They May Not Mean To, But They Do by Cathleen Schine; Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley; and End of Watch by Stephen King. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Kafka’s Century
Kafka‘s The Metamorphosis has officially hit the century mark, and over at The Guardian Richard T. Kelly celebrates with “100 thoughts for 100 years.” Pair with our own Matt Seidel‘s thoughts on rereading Kafka’s masterpiece, which you can find here.
Rote She Wrote
At The NYT Mag, Virginia Heffernan‘s “Drill, Baby, Drill” explores the possibility that drills and memorization might not be quite as oppressive as some of the kinder, gentler pedagogues of our time suggest and offers a list of aps to help aspiring rote learners (Nota Bene: VerseByHeart).
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Time and Again
“In Proust, the rhythm, the phrasing, the movement of the sentence, even the grammar—it’s all so complex that it would be almost impossible to repeat anyone else’s work. Because of that I’m all the more aware of the differences, and of how admirable Scott Moncrieff’s work often is.” George Plimpton interviews Richard Howard about translating Remembrance of Things Past, for the Summer 1989 issue of The Paris Review. The interview was reissued to mark Richard Howard’s birthday, who turns eighty-six today.
Teachable Moments
Lots of writers have stories about creative writing classes that changed their lives. The remembrance of the pivotal class is a mini-genre in itself. At The Rumpus, Warren Adler writes about his own life-changing experience, looking back on a class he took at the New School all the way back in 1949.
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