Vanity Fair remembers Christopher Hitchens, a favorite of ours who was always fun to root for, and who, as you’ve no doubt heard by now, died last night. Andrew Sullivan remembers an email exchange from happier times. Hitchens’ ebook from this year, The Enemy, is in our Hall of Fame, and we reviewed his memoir, Hitch-22, last year.
We’ll Miss Hitch
Sex and the City
Recommended Reading: On the reinvention of Sex and the City in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life to create something recognizable and true. You could also read our interview with Yanagihara.
It Is Shark Week, After All
Bret Easton Ellis is collaborating with Taxi Driver director Paul Schrader on a new “psychological horror” movie about sharks. Coincidentally, HTMLGiant‘s Blake Butler just revisited Ellis’ infamous novel American Psycho.
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Summer Marketing Season
It's that time again. Out come the bathing suits and beach-focused marketing campaigns. Allison Duncan dissects the category of the "beach read."
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The Fittest Theory
In the mid-aughts, Jonathan Gottschall pioneered “literary Darwinism,” a new form of analysis which applied evolutionary theory to works of literature. It was part of a wider upheaval in English departments across the country. Now, more than ten years later, we can make an assessment: how’d it work out for Gottschall? The answer: not well. (h/t The Paris Review Daily)
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“This is my college education.”
Eccentric celebrity chef José Andrés (who should be familiar to fans of No Reservations) has an enviable library of cookbooks and volumes of food history. He even owns a notepad of Honoré Julien’s (Chef for both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) which allegedly proves the Frenchman introduced French fries to America.
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A Blurb of One’s Own
Full Stop will be celebrating five years in January as an online literary journal. To commemorate the anniversary, they’re publishing their first-ever book, collecting the very best writing from their website and featuring blurbs by anyone who makes a donation to the magazine. Pair with this Millions piece on the art of blurb writing.
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Making It Big
Over at Catapult, Mensah Demary shares the story of how he got to be a professional editor. As he puts it, “I was asked recently what it takes to succeed as a writer and editor. Actually, I was being asked a more specific question: how do you become a successful writer and editor? I don’t have the answers; I only have my life.” Pair with Kate Angus’s Millions essay on making a living as a poet.
London, Beachside
Folks in London, England–well, technically Greenwich–could have their very own custom-built beach for the next five years.