“The act of writing is a conscious act of humility”: Diego Trelles Paz recalls the advice on writing given to him by Roberto Bolaño during their brief correspondence, at n+1.
Letters to Roberto Bolaño
“If there was ever a people that knew how to handle a hangover, surely it is we.”
John Banville looks at the "persistently grim cheerfulness" of the Irish people.
Strange Brew
Lorrie Moore once said in an interview that what’s good for writing is bad for life. In this vein, we might assume that coffee, which is bad for your health but good for your writing, neatly supports her conjecture. But what if it turns out that coffee is a detriment to creativity? Maria Konnikova investigates research that suggests this might be the case.
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The Revolution Will Not Have Same-Day Shipping
"If what a bookstore offers matters to you, then shop at a bookstore. If you feel that the experience of reading a book is valuable, then read the book. This is how we change the world: we grab hold of it. We change ourselves." April 30th is Independent Bookstore Day. Celebrate early with a revisit to this 2012 essay by Ann Patchett on the resilience of the indie bookstore. Here's an interview with Janet Geddis, founder of Avid Bookshop in Athens, GA, on deciding to become a bookseller.
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Self-Absorbed
Geoff Dyer is fond of taking potshots at literary academics. He devotes considerable time in one of his novels to a professor whose speech at a conference goes off the rails. Which is why it’s odd that, in mid-July, the author showed up at a conference devoted to -- what else? -- his own work. (It's apropos to point out here that our own Mark O'Connell wrote a great essay for Slate about Dyer.)
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Ask a Librarian
"Is it possible to keep an octopus in a private home?" "Are Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates the same person?" Oh, the things people have asked reference librarians.
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Mary Ruefle Reads Her Work
Listen to Mary Ruefle read two of her poems over at The Poetry Foundation: “White Buttons” and “Shalimar.”
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Curiosities
Anne Fernald's two posts about her grandmother's editions of Virginia Woolf are a treat.Gwenda Bond of Shaken and Stirred landed on NPR over the weekend to talk about the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables, in honor of which the Modern Library has put out a new edition.The Oxford Project: "In 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein set out to photograph every single resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa." It's a neat sounding photo book, reminiscent of La Porte, Indiana.Under 30? Really good at writing book reviews? You should enter VQR's Young Reviewers Contest.It's an alarm clock that wakes you up with the voice of Stephen Fry in the character of Jeeves. You can listen to all the recordings at the site. An example: "Let us seize the day and take it roughly from behind... as the Colonel used to say in his unfortunate way."
Three Kafkas Begin the Day
Isotropic Films has begun filming a “fresh, modern horror [film] version” of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. At The New York Review of Books, Mark Harman offers a new translation of the late author's "A Message From the Emperor," which Harman calls "hauntingly oblique." Further away still, Elif Batuman recognizes some Kafkaesque street signage in Turkey.
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