Newsweek takes an “infinitely fascinating quest” through David Foster Wallace’s just-released archive at University of Texas’ Harry Ransom Center.
From the Mixed Up Files of DFW
O Health Coach! My Health Coach!
“To you, clerk, literary man, sedentary person, man of fortune, idler, the same advice. Up!” Walt Whitman, health nut and paleo dieter–resist carbs, obey red meat!
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The Melrose Series
Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose series will be adapted into a five-part Showtime series starring Benedict Cumberbatch. A few years back on our site, Ben Hamilton wrote, “the pleasures of reading Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose novels can feel strangely illicit.”
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In Defense of Bad Sex
We recently posted about the finalists of Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Awards. (Morrissey’s List of the Lost was the winner!) Allan Drew writes at The Atlantic in defense of #BadSex.
New York City Pub Crawl — This Thursday!
For those in New York City this week, Goodreads is hosting a literary pub crawl around lower Manhattan this Thursday night starting at 7 p.m. Millions contributor Emily St. John Mandel will be joined by fellow authors Colson Whitehead and Amy King for a reading at Housing Works. After that, the group will decamp for Botanica and Tom & Jerry’s before finishing the evening at KGB Bar. The event is free (though the booze will cost you).
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Picture Perfect
We pick photos to accompany writing all the time, but what do writers think about photography? At The New Yorker, photo editor Jessie Wender asked eight writers, from Jennifer Egan to Sasha Frere-Jones, what their favorite photographs are.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Eugenides, Hollinghurst, Kadare, Butler
One of the biggest literary releases of the year is out today, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. Read the book’s opening here. Another literary heavy hitter out today is The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst. One of Albanian writer Ismail Kadare’s masterpieces, The Palace of Dreams, is now back in print in English, and Blake Butler’s memoir Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia is now on shelves.
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A(n Induced) Standing Ovation
Science now confirms what’s long been suspected by people related to theater kids: “the quality of a performance does not drive the amount of applause an audience gives.”
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At Long Last
The Modern Language Association has finally weighed in on how to cite tweets in academic papers.
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