Did you miss 192 Books’ Geoff Dyer and John Jeremiah Sullivan conversation a few weeks back? Well, good thing for you that FSG put the whole transcript online.
Which One Will Write An Essay About It First?
I “Love” This.
I’m glad someone started this blog of unnecessary quotations marks for me. (via @narrativemag).
Bin Laden Book
As the world digests the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden, we offer a recommendation for Lawrence Wright’s masterful book The Looming Tower, which tells the history of Bin Laden and the terrorist movement that led to 9/11.
Maybe His Advice Isn’t So Great After All
You might think that the co-author of Fiesta: How to Survive the Bulls of Pamplona would be able to partake in the Spanish city’s annual event without suffering any injuries. Unfortunately for Bill Hillmann, that’s not the case.
James Salter (1925-2015)
Writer James Salter died on Friday. We interviewed him in 2012 and he reflected on memory and on his long life as a writer. He said, “Everything you know, nobody else knows, and everything you imagine or see belongs to you alone. What you write comes out of that, both in the trivial and deepest sense.” Prior to that, in 2010, Sonya Chung wrote about Salter’s legacy and how he finally seemed to be getting his due as more than just “a writer’s writer.”
Dear and Dirty
Haven’t read our own Mark O’Connell’s great new essay at Slate? To mark the hundredth anniversary of Dubliners, Mark paid a visit to the James Joyce House, which led him to reflect on life in his native city. “If you live in Dublin, if you are yourself a Dubliner,” he writes, “no matter how many times you read the book, it will always reveal something profound and essential and unrealized about the city and its people.”
Mercury in Retrograde
“Creativity is back in the house in the second half of the month, so quit your grumbling and get back to work.” These writer horoscopes for the month of March will have you crushing through writers block and haggling over your contracts in no time.