“Pop Quiz: Which word is funnier, observe or stalk?” Scott Adams, creator of “Dilbert,” gives some tips on how to write like a cartoonist.
How to Write Like a Cartoonist
Fitzgerald Ales
We all know F. Scott Fitzgerald would’ve made a great drinking buddy but how about a microbrewer? Here’s his prohibition ale recipe. It gets the job done, but Jay Gatsby probably wouldn’t buy this hooch.
That Kinetic Feeling
A couple weeks ago, Darcey Steinke wrote an essay for The Millions in which she remembered her friendship with Barry Hannah. She went into detail about the freewheeling energy of his prose. Now, in a review of Steinke’s latest for Bookforum, Lisa Locascio writes about the author’s own talents. “Many authors bounce the sacred and profane against each another; Steinke blasts them together with the intensity of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC),” she writes.
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Obscene and Digitized at Last
Need a giggle? You can now access the British Library’s collection of obscene writing online, which have previously been locked up for over a century. The newly digitized collection includes the works of the Marquis de Sade, Thomas Stretzer, and more.
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Addressing the Spider
Recommended Reading: J. M. Tyree’s new story at Guernica. “There’s a man on the bus sitting directly in front of you. He has a small brown spider crawling across his red shirt, near his left shoulder blade.” You could also watch our episode of The Book Report on Our Secret Life in the Movies by Tyree and Michael McGriff.
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A Girl Is a Fully-Formed Thing
“The things I do not want to write about become the things I write about.” Year in Reading alumnus Eimear McBride talks to The Guardian on the occasion of her second novel’s arrival. The Lesser Bohemians follows upon her hugely successful debut, A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, which we reviewed back when it came out in the U.S.
Little Fiction’s Book Preview; Le Translation Preview
On their Tumblr, Little Fiction is previewing some of the books being released in 2014-2015 by authors they’ve recently worked with. Meanwhile, Chad Post put together “Le Translation Preview” to promote some international work being published this July. Think of both lists as complementary compendiums to our Great Second-Half 2014 Book Preview.
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