Aspiring novelists, take note: when you get a $200,000 advance for one of your books, don’t buy any clothes.
$200,000? Who Said Publishing’s On the Outs?
Drink It Up
Depending on your persuasion, this blog post listing six songs about whiskey is either a funny article or a kind of public service.
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“describe this flight / and not add a last line.”
“All poems of public grief are private poems first,” writes Mark Doty in his evaluation of Wisława Szymborska’s poem, “Photograph from September 11th.” Indeed, what Doty learned “over the course of those dozen years, was that the words one hammers out in private, in order to attempt some kind of sense, may end up being used by people in ways you could have never anticipated.”
Earnest Jest
For Atlas Obscura, Tucker Leighty-Phillips writes on how a Portuguese-to-English phrasebook, introduced to English readers by Mark Twain, became a comedy sensation. Pair with this Millions piece on Twain’s travels.
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Your Country Rocks
Few people know that Roger Ebert was an ardent Anglophile, so much so that in 1986 he wrote an obscure little book, The Perfect London Walk, in which the lifelong film critic laid out his preferred walking path through the city. Over at Slate, Katie Engelhart reviews the book, which apparently still functions as a guide to a decent stroll.
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Adventures in Journalism
Bono and Bob Geldof guest edited Monday's issue of the Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto.
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The Verdict Is In!
Hurry over to the Tournament of Books to see whether Open City or The Sisters Brothers was this year's big winner!
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