At The Nervous Breakdown, Antonya Nelson interviews herself. She reveals why she writes stories, and describes her new novel, Bound, due out this fall.
“But I can tell you about my kitchen.”
Raising L.A.’s Literary Profile
Wednesday night at the Hammer Museum, the editors of the new Los Angeles Review of Books explained how their new web-only book review will raise L.A.’s literary profile.
Lowbrow
“I have a theory: the thing that makes you a unique writer hasn’t got so much to do with your influences as it does with how you became a writer in the first place. I think your preferences—your obsessions—come just as much from the first sorts of things you consumed and were passionate about. Whether that’s pop music, comics, “lowbrow” fiction, soap operas, or anything else, the thing that matters most is what started you writing stories.” Amber Sparks writes about “lowbrow” influences and the many paths to becoming a storyteller in an essay for Electric Literature.
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Typewriter Art
Luddites rejoice! If you still use a manual typewriter, you already know that they’re superior to laptops for writing. Now comes proof that they’re also better at making art than text-based computer art programs like ASCII and its “colored cousin,” ANSI. The video’s narrator tells us, in German, that many of the subjects autographed their typewriter-generated portraits, and the Pope sent a thank you note — and cash!
Justin Cronin on Writing “The Passage”
The Passage author Justin Cronin answers questions for Salon’s Reading Club: “For many years … I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.”
New McEwan on the Way
Here’s another book that will be in our July “Most Anticipated Books” round up: Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan, said to be set in 1972 and follow a female spy who is a compulsive reader of novels.
eBooks Will Surpass Print Sales, But At What Cost?
“PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) estimates that trade … ebooks will drive $8.2 billion in sales by 2017 — surpassing projected print book sales,” writes Laura Hazard Owen. Meanwhile I can’t help but wonder: is this bad news for the environment?