Emma Straub describes her (supine) writing rituals at The Big Other.
I Write Lying Down
“How should intellectuals write about acts of immense depravity?”
This is a fantastic piece on W. H. Auden, "The Murder of Lidice", and the importance of the ideological and political contexts of war. Joanna Bourke writes, "the flood of poems [after the Lidice massacre] actually served to draw attention away from the people of Lidice and towards the swollen sensibilities of the poets and their readers."
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Broken Mirrors
Etgar Keret, one of Israel’s best-known fiction writers, has a new memoir out, The Seven Good Years. The book covers a seven-year stretch between the birth of his son and the death of his father. At The Rumpus, Ryan Krull talks with Keret about the memoir, nuclear politics and living in Warsaw. You could also read Bezalel Stern on Keret’s most recent collection of short stories.
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Reading Under the Influence
In general, it’s not much fun to read a book you don’t feel like reading -- especially if that book is Antigone, you’re on Dexedrine, and you are Marilyn Monroe.
“Me & Gin,” Comics
Recommended Reading (Comics Edition): Jordan Jeffries’s comic adaptation of Lindsay Hunter’s “Me & Gin” – which originally appeared in Barrelhouse.
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Tastemaker
How do you make the jump from editing a food magazine to writing novels? It’s a tricky change to make, but Ruth Reichl did it, as she explains to Marnie Hanel in an interview in the Times. (Her first novel came out last week.)
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