Recommended weekend reading: Walker Percy’s “Bourbon, Neat.”
“Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.”
Do Or Do Not
"Listen to what makes your hair stand on end, your heart melt, and your eyes go wide, what stops you in your tracks and makes you want to live, wherever it comes from, and hope that your writing can do all those things for other people. Write for other people, but don’t listen to them too much." Being a writer is really hard. Fortunately, Very Good Writer Rebecca Solnit is here with ten tips on how to be a better one.
Boyhood Tales
Random House is releasing a collection of previously unpublished poems and stories from Truman Capote’s youth, recently found in the archives of the New York Public Library. Over at Full Stop, Jacob Kiernan examines the keen political conscience in Capote’s never-before-published work. As he explains it, “While his early stories are structurally simple, they evince a prescient social conscience.”
●
●
Stand By Your Man
At the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the answer to a bad boyfriend is to read a few good novels. Does The Talented Mr. Ripley remind you of your lover?
“Rote lessons before the air raid drill”
At The Atlantic, Caleb Crain (of Necessary Errors and n+1 fame) writes about the galvanizing effects of memorizing his favorite poem. (If you’re wondering, the poem in question is W.H. Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone.”)
One comment:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Literally the Most Interesting
"Interesting:" another word to add to the "overused" list?
●
●
Terrific Ham
"Terrific ham. The best. Terrific eggs. Were they green? Who knows? So many years." In case you missed it, the best tweets from yesterday's #TrumpBookReport trend. Pair with our own Claire Cameron's translation of Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies for Twitter.
“Because with Helen DeWitt, everything is physical.”
Lightning Rods author (and occasional Millions commenter) Helen DeWitt has a story entitled "Recovery" featured in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading series. Don’t miss the “single sentence animation” video for it, either.
Here to Stay
Over at Flavorwire, Jonathon Sturgeon responds to Jeff Guo’s recent article on the end of the period. As he puts it, “Any long piece without periods — is like a car without brakes. You can drive it, but you’d rather not.”
●
●
Superb! Thanks Nick.