Leonard Cohen’s new album Old Ideas is getting glowing reviews. Slate says of Cohen, “When it comes to lyrics, he’s second to no one—including Dylan.”
Cohen’s New Old Ideas
Just let it be weird.
Mark Mann on going to the gallery and looking at art: “The fact is, nobody knows what art is or why people make it. This is blatantly disturbing.”
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From Football to Fiction
Rashard Mendenhall is retiring from the Arizona Cardinals in order to write, among other reasons. “The truth is, I don’t really think my walking away is that big of deal. For me it’s saying, ‘Football was pretty cool, but I don’t want to play anymore. I want to travel the world and write!'” Maybe he’ll be published by another retired sports star’s imprint?
The Nobel Will Return in 2019
“These elements of scandal, by now familiar in the #MeToo era, claimed an unusual casualty on Friday: The Nobel Prize in Literature, the world’s most prestigious accolade for writing.” In the wake of a sex abuse scandal, The Swedish Academy announced it will postpone this year’s award until next year when they will name two winners. In the meantime, maybe we should all mull over the problem with prestigious prizes.
Plotting The Booker: An Infographic
Are you writing a novel about an escaped tiger? (They’re quite popular these days.) Well, if you hope to win the Booker prize, you’d increase your odds by 1,300% if you switched your theme to “death.”
Indie in the Age of Amazon
“Independent bookstores are intellectual centers of a city.” Our own Bill Morris, who’s currently on tour for his latest book, Motor City Burning, writes for The Daily Beast about the importance and continued relevance of bookstores in the age of Amazon.
Type Setting
In a clip The Atlantic calls “technology porn for book lovers,” you can see how manuscripts became books in the 1940s.
Silver Press Launches
Silver Press is a new feminist publisher based in London. Forthcoming titles include Leonora Carrington’s The Debutante and Other Stories, which you can read about here, as well as the first U.K. edition of Audre Lorde’s essays and poetry.
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