Here are a couple more pieces on Bill Keller’s departure as executive editor of The New York Times. An interview with Esquire conducted not long before his announcement: “Newspaper publishers have done more to kill newspapers than any innovative form of media.” And New York describes how Keller’s recent cranky columns about new vs. old media ticked off the newsroom.
More Keller
Twitter Fiction Festival
On Friday Twitter announced their new Twitter Fiction Festival, a “virtual storytelling celebration.” The festival will feature “creative experiments in storytelling from authors around the world,” and you can submit story proposals over here.
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The Thriller Code
“Rather than outlining your plot in chronological order, try outlining your plot as if it were a candle burning at both ends. Begin the process by writing your first and last chapter simultaneously.” Amazon Author Insights gathers, well, insights on writing from Dan Brown and other famous crime and thriller novelists. (Full disclosure: Amazon helps us pay the bills around here!) We will also never not recommend this evergreen piece from our own archives, of writers on the best advice they ever received.
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The Signature Smirk of the Absurd
This essay in the Times Literary Supplement on Kurt Vonnegut‘s “strangely central place in American fiction despite his occasional insistence on his own marginality” is certainly worth a read.
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Rachman’s Single
Tom Rachman, author of Millions Hall of Famer The Imperfectionists, has a new short story out as a Kindle Single: “The Bathtub Spy.”
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Fuck Yeah, NYRB
Who says publishers have weak brands? Someone loves the NYRB Classics so much they started a Tumblr blog about them. It is called, appropriately, Fuck Yeah NYRB Classics!
They’re Not Rocks
“I have this belief that you have to save at least half of your crucial experiences. The ones that are crystalline. The ones that you always can recall. And you recall that every detail—what actors call a sense impression. You remember how things smelled, what they felt like, how you felt at the moment. You remember every single last part of this episode, or moment in your life.” This interview with Norman Mailer from The Paris Review never actually made it to print, which makes it all the more fascinating.
Deceitful Above All Things
Are you familiar with JT LeRoy (or rather, Savannah Knoop … or wait, Laura Albert), perpetrator of one of the greatest literary hoaxes in recent memory? Author: The JT LeRoy Story is a new documentary by Jeff Feuerzeig that asks questions about whether or not existence is predicated on real-world physicality — LeRoy’s books exist, so doesn’t LeRoy exist by association?
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