In The Atlantic, Richard Bausch makes a case against writing manuals: “The trouble of course is that a good book is not something you can put together like a model airplane.”
The case against writing manuals
Beautiful Malaysia
The latest short by James W. Griffiths, We Were Wanderers On a Prehistoric Earth, is an “ode to the incredible flora and fauna of Malaysia.” The film is accompanied by a passage from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and it’s clear that the author’s description of the Congo applies to Southeast Asia quite easily.
Something To Think About This Sunday
Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo author Mark Bowden explains the “hardest job in football” in this Atlantic article from 2009.
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“Instead of Sobbing, You Write Sentences”
“Most of the time I think of the self as a snare, and I don’t like being trapped in it. I try to reach out beyond my pittance of experience and connect to the world, but it turns out one way to do that is to be honest and accurate about my own life.” Leslie Jamison interviews Charles D’Ambrosio for The New Yorker. Pair with our own Hannah Gersen‘s review of D’Ambrosio’s Loitering.
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BOMBlog Double
Two fantastic interviews are up on BOMB Magazine‘s BOMBlog: In the first, Millions contributor Matt Jakubowski speaks with Shards author Ismet Prcic, and in the second, Swamplandia! author Karen Russell does a Q&A for San Francisco’s Litquake.
Unferth on Lerner
The always fantastic Deb Olin Unferth reviews Ben Lerner‘s Leaving the Atocha Station.
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An Examination of the Trauma Plot
The ways we write about trauma have evolved. "In a world infatuated with victimhood," Parul Sehgal writes for The New Yorker, "has trauma emerged as a passport to status—our red badge of courage?"
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