Canada’s famous Nightmares Fear Factory is setting the tone for Halloween with its hysterical Flickr stream of spooked guests.
Fright Night
The Essence of Slouching
Need some inspiration? These quotes from Joan Didion are sure to make your day. Picked by noted Ayn Rand scholar Mallory Ortberg, they include such gems as “I’m from Sacramento, but it’s honestly not a big deal” and “California doesn’t remind me of the apocalypse at all.”
Not Exactly Rotten
According to a recent survey, Danes are the happiest people in the world. This came as a surprise, writes Mathilde Walter Clark, to most of her fellow Scandinavians, who know very well the unhappier elements of their daily lives. The problem, she suggests, is that words like “happiness,” “ambition” and “contentment” have subtly different meanings in different languages — in other words, happiness in Denmark isn’t the same thing as happiness in America. You could also read our own Emily St. John Mandel’s review of the Danish writer Jonas T. Bengtsson’s A Fairy Tale.
A Detective Meets His End
Things you can learn from this interview with Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell: there is a genre called “Scandi-noir;” the time Mankell spent as a sailor acted as “a sort of university;” and the fact that Mankell has been married four times proves that he is an optimist.
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An Existential Test
“It is a privilege and a gift and an honor to be a debut author, but it is, above all things, an existential test.” Courtney Maum writes about the darker side of publishing a first book.
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Is There Life on Pallas?
John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar isn’t the only vintage science fiction novel making waves this week. Andrew Joron takes a look at “German fantasist” Paul Scheerbart’s Lesabéndio – a 1913 novel that was recently reissued by the folks at Wakefield Press.
GQ Questions Lorin Stein
Among the breadcrumbs doled out in this GQ slideshow/interview with Paris Review editor Lorin Stein is this: John Jeremiah Sullivan helped him write his job application.
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