Remember that preview for Death to Smoochy, where the voice-over proclaimed, “From the twisted mind of Danny DeVito?” Me neither. But if twisty minds are your thing, you should check out this page from Gay Talese‘s outline for the classic “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” written on a shirt cardboard. (Remember shirt cardboards? Yeah… Me neither.)
Combing through Gay Talese’s Laundry…Sort of
Wake Up and Smell the Covfefe
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.” Following President Trump’s misstatement of a line from The Great Gatsby, The Guardian has a quiz of literary misquotations for your mid-week amusement.
●
●
Stories in Space
Recommended Reading: On new posters from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and space travel’s place in storytelling. Dominic Smith asks why there aren’t more stories in space.
“The reader emerges … refreshed but crippled”
Emily Gould champions Barbara Comyns‘s overlooked novels at The Awl. One more deserving mention: Comyns’s haunting Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead.
Abundance and Awe
Recommended reading: Year in Reading alum Leslie Jamison writes about the pleasures and “democratic awe” of Whitman‘s Specimen Days. Pair with our own Michael Bourne‘s “Embracing the Other I Am: or, How Walt Whitman Saved My Life.”
●
●