“Please shred all documents up to and including this one.” – From Ben Greenman’s “Paper Trail” for McSweeney’s.
Paper Trail
Butterball HR
McSweeney’s takes us behind the scenes of the Butterball hotline during the holiday craziness. You could also check out Alexander Cockburn’s short piece on Thanksgiving.
Error 404: Identity Not Found
At Full-Stop this week, an interview with Joshua Cohen, whose new book, Four New Messages, spans “a wide geographic and narrative terrain.” Back in August, Johannes Lichtman gave his own take on the collection, as did Shannon Elderon at The Rumpus.
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Writers and Their Snacks
Franz Kafka liked to drink milk as he wrote. Walt Whitman liked a breakfast of cold meat and oysters. Marcel Proust was an espresso addict. This info graphic from The New York Times raises the question: what do you snack on as you write? You might also want to snack as you read that article, so check out our own Lydia Kiesling‘s piece from last April.
Top 20 Short Stories of 2010
Chris Flynn of Australian Book Review runs down the top 20 short stories of 2010 (many of them American) at his blog, Fly the Falcon.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Dante, Wilson, Riley, Waite
New this week: Clive James’s translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Edward O. Wilson’s Letters to a Young Scientist, Amity & Sorrow by Peggy Riley, and The Carrion Birds by Urban Waite.
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“Copywrong”
“At bottom, the argument about copyright is not really a philosophical argument. It’s a battle between interest groups.” Louis Menand writes about American copyright law in the digital age for The New Yorker, and his essay pairs well with the many articles on copyright we’ve published over the years.
“Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.”
At Electric Literature, Jim Shepard discusses imagining one’s way into history.
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