The Morning News posts a terrific (if slightly ingenuous?) take on the vacuity of the poet’s life in NYC: Frank O’Hara it ain’t. Whether this is a failure of the city, or merely of the poet, is an open question. (via The Book Bench).
Hell is Other People
The “Chicken Breast” of Spirits
How has a spirit legally defined as being “without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color” flourished in today’s economic climate? Victorino Matus‘ Weekly Standard article explores the history and ubiquity of vodka. Perhaps this article is best paired with something from NPR‘s list of “Great American Writers and Their Cocktails.”
J.M. Coetzee on Philip Roth
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Because Useful
You may have heard that “because” is a preposition now, because Internet. What you may not have heard is that the American Dialect Society named “because” their Word of the Year. Their reasoning? The word’s new meaning allows us to omit full clauses, which makes it useful. (Hilariously, they also named Sharknado the “most unnecessary” new word.)
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Talking with Michelle Orange
At The Nervous Breakdown, Brad Listi sits down with Michelle Orange, who talks about writing ledes, Pauline Kael, and the story behind her new book, This is Running For Your Life. (For more, go check out her interview with our own Hannah Gersen.)
Epic
“Idea #2: Book opens to reveal it is hollow, contains one medium-sized onion. Review: ‘Multilayered… had me in tears.'” How to write a first novel that gets praised in the New York Times.
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The Threat of Death
The New Yorker has published the chapter of Salman Rushdie’s forthcoming memoir, Joseph Anton, that describes the circumstances of his life immediately after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s spiritual leader in 1989, called for his execution by proclaiming a fatwā on the writer, after the controversial treatment of Islamic history and the Prophet Muhammad in The Satanic Verses. PEN American, by the way, accepts donations online.
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