NME journalist and Man and Boy author Tony Parsons has been named London’s Heathrow Airport’s second writer in residence. He will use his weeklong stay to research for his new book Departures: Seven Stories from Heathrow. It will be released in October, and the BAA plans on distributing 5,000 copies to airport customers. In 2009, Alain de Botton served as the airport’s first writer in residence, and he used his stint to pen A Week at the Airport.
Heathrow’s Second Writer in Residence
Remembering Nora Ephron
The New York Times looks back on Nora Ephron’s career and celebrates her distinct tone. EW has collected some of the best quotes from her books. Ariel Levy recalls her first encounter with Ephron’s “funny, frank, self-effacing but never self-pitying, and utterly intimate” voice.
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The Voice
Whether or not you’ve read Grace Paley, you’re likely to appreciate this George Saunders essay about her, which justifies his contention that she’s “one of the great writers of voice of the last century.” You could also read our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s tribute to Paley upon her death.
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Sonya Chung at McNally Jackson 3/10
Millions Contributor Sonya Chung will read from her just-released novel Long for This World at McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street, NYC, on March 10 at 7pm.
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The Birth of the Ellipsis
A Cambridge professor has identified the earliest use of the ellipsis in English literature. Find out more at The Guardian. Sam Anderson reminds us that ellipses are good in moderation through an examination of Dan Brown’s Inferno.
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More Keller
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.
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And the Funnel Came Down
“I had dreams about tornadoes. I dreamed of houses collapsing, people searching through rubble for dead bodies. Most of these dreams involved watching a large tornado in a field as it moved directly toward me. Like the scene early in the film The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy looks out the window and sees the tornado approaching, that sense of doom is always present in my dreams.” At the Paris Review Daily, Brandon Hobson reflects on a lifelong fear of bad weather.
“Murakami, who is nothing if not ambitious, has created a kind of alternative world, a mirror of ours, reversed.”
Though coverage of Haruki Murakami‘s 1Q84 has been ubiquitous this month (appearing on this site as well), it is always worthwhile to read the inimitable New York Review of Books‘ take on such things.
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