Norris Church Mailer, widow of Norman Mailer, died yesterday at 61 following a long battle with cancer. Mark Olshaker, president of the Norman Mailer Society, wrote: “She was the pilgrim soul who captured and won Norman’s heart and mind and who shared with him the last three decades of his life.”
Norris Church Mailer dead at 61
Michael Lewis’ Man Cave
Here's a sentence I never thought I'd type: A seersuckered Michael Lewis shows off his "man cave" for ValleyGirl.tv. You can skip ahead to 9:20 for the tour. (via)
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The Master Carpenter
“Better to close your eyes and carry on with your own work, pretending the master carpenter doesn’t exist.” Karl Ove Knausgaard reads Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission – one of the most anticipated books of 2015. Pair with this Millions essay on Knausgaard’s My Struggle.
Agency In Poetry
Recommended Reading: This interview at The Paris Review with poet Morgan Parker: "I think personal narrative is really important for the individual and for a collective and for a people. I think it’s important to have agency in that narrative. There’s so much about contemporary life where one story is written upon the person by the outside world, by circumstance."
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The Vaguest Designation
"The wish to be a writer, and the will to be one, solve nothing about how you will live, and don’t even solve anything about how you will write. You have given yourself the vaguest designation." Kristy Eldredge writes for The Rumpus about drawing inspiration from the unconventional career choices of Year in Reading alum Geoff Dyer, including the New York Times column he almost never wrote. Pair her essay with our own Janet Potter's review of Dyer's latest full-length work, Another Great Day at Sea.
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“A sports version of The Awl”
Step aside, Grantland. There's a new alternative sports site in town.
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