Today only at Woot, a Stephenie Meyer parody qua flashlight advert: “I was just watching you sleep. Isn’t that dark and brooding and romantic?” Edward brooded darkly.
Woot Twilight Parody
Sketches of a Life
Recommended Reading: On Lucia Berlin’s final stories, “a series of sketches which traced her life.”
On Zadie Smith and Barack Obama
Electric Literature’s blog The Outlet begins a series of essays with the question: “Is Zadie Smith the Barack Obama of literature?”
Journalistic Disturbances
In 2009, Rivka Galchen wrote a lengthy piece in Harper’s about the quest to predict and control hurricanes. Now that her article is sadly apropos, it’s available for free on the web. (Said quest had a major role in the author’s excellent first novel.)
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A Young Writer
Recommended reading: Joseph Scapellato summarizes the life of a young writer for Electric Lit. “You are a young writer. Write.”
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Clearness, Wetness, Coolness
Anne Carson has a new story in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, about swimming and its discontents. As she puts it, “People think swimming is carefree and effortless. A bath! In fact, it is full of anxieties.” Pair with her first published short story in the January issue of Harper’s.
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“Sequence of blackouts”
Recommended Reading: this new translation of an Albert Camus play at Page-Turner.
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On Dr. Seuss and Pluto, Etc.
It may not surprise you to learn that Neil deGrasse Tyson wishes he’d met Oscar Wilde. As part of the By the Book series in the Times, the astronomer talks about his favorite writers, including Carl Sagan, Bill Bryson and Jonathan Swift.
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