“In the days after the procedure I was sometimes so exhausted by movement that I would wait patiently for someone to come in and give me a paper cup of pills that was almost, not quite, out of my reach. But somehow, I would always contrive to get my pen in my hand, however far it had rolled… When Virginia Woolf’s doctors forbade her to write, she obeyed them. Which makes me ask, what kind of wuss was Woolf?” Hilary Mantel writes a diary on hospitalization for the London Review of Books.
Hilary Mantel’s Hospital Diary
Word Games
In an effort to adjust more comfortably to the modern age, the Merriam-Webster company is revamping its iconic dictionary, the first to focus mainly on American English. At Slate, Stefan Fatsis considers the changes, which raise the question of what a modern dictionary should look like. Related: our own Bill Morris on the American Heritage Dictionary.
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In Transit
Over at Guernica, Liza St. James interviews Adam Z. Levy and Ashley Nelson Levy, the founders of the independent press Transit Books. As they put it, “We were noticing this kind of partition between two types of readerships: those who read domestic literature and those who read translation. [...] We were interested in the separation of those literary spheres, and began to wonder how to bridge the gap between them.”
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Too Much Imagining
Jonah Lehrer has resigned from his staff position at the New Yorker, after Tablet Magazine revealed he had fabricated quotes--from Bob Dylan, no less!--in his bestseller Imagine: How Creativity Works, which since has been pulled from the market. Michael C. Moynihan, the journalist who discovered the deception, was interviewed by the Observer, saying he felt "horrible" watching vitriolic reactions pour in. Previously the book saw critique for its loose science in both The New Republic and The Millions.
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Recalibrating the Hype Game
Three Guys One Book wonders why publishers aren't more aggressive about drumming up pre-publication hype, instead admonishing media outlets to hold their coverage until after the books are published.
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Keep An Open Mind About It
From the annals of Wikipedia: would you rather have Witzelsucht or Foerster's syndrome? Whichever you decide, it looks like neuron your own with this one.
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