In her scathing, yet utterly necessary, review of Steve Jobs and its subject, Maureen Tkacik writes that “with any luck future generations will saddle Steve Jobs, the brand, with the blemish of all the jobs (small ‘j’) a once-great nation relinquished because of brand-name billionaires like Jobs.”
The Mythology of Jobs
The Likeness Man
“If you’re doing an assignment for some Luddite professor who insists on originality – and probably uses typewriter ribbon – keep in mind that I only offer phrases from hard-to-trace sources. Just today I was slipped some primo stuff from an English teacher in Simonton, Iowa who’s been advising the high school literary magazine for decades. This woman, her voice is as smooth as creamed corn.” Confessions of a metaphor merchant.
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Dialing Down the Queasy
In 1998, Matthew Stokoe kicked off his career as a novelist with Cows, a stomach-turning book set largely in the confines of a slaughterhouse. Now, Stokoe has written a book with a somewhat ironic title, considering it dials down the obscenity in comparison to his early work. Drew Smith interviews the author over at Full-Stop.
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Thoughts of the Enemy
In the new Granta, Adam Johnson writes about the mind-bending experience of traveling to North Korea, an experience which informed his Pulitzer-winning novel The Orphan Master’s Son. Perhaps the saddest anecdote — and there are a lot of sad anecdotes — is the one about the North Korean tour guide who couldn’t believe the author didn’t want to buy knockoff goods.
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Stories Upon Stories
A D Jameson asked HTMLGIANT readers to name “the best story that [they’d] read in the past few years,” and then he handily rounded up all of the answers and arranged them chronologically. He even provided links when he could. I guess we’ll see you guys next month!
Confessions of a Ghostwriter
“There are people out there who want you to write their novels for them,” observes professional ghostwriter Sari Botton. Over at Scratch, she shares some advice for breaking into the industry. Also, the magazine has made her longer article about “the spooky finances behind her gigs” free to read – all you have to do is register.
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“The worlds of rock and lit appear to be merging”
What do indie rock musicians share in common with experimental writers? A great deal, and not just a distaste for both of those over-used adjectives.
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Trolling with Amanda Palmer
Art is about connecting the dots, Amanda Palmer proposed in her keynote address on creativity and sharing art in the internet age at the 2013 Grub Muse Literary Conference earlier this month. “For every bridge you build together with your community of readers, there’s a new set of trolls who sit underneath it,” she said about the internet.
DFW Festchrift at The Quarterly Conversation
The new issue of The Quarterly Conversation features a symposium on the work of the late David Foster Wallace, featuring essays by Edie Meidav, Lance Olsen, and Andrew Altschul…plus Scott Esposito‘s welcome defense of Infinite Jest‘s canonization.
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