Literary Disco, a podcast hosted by Julia Pistell, Tod Goldberg, and Rider Strong (yeah! Sean from Boy Meets World!) is just great. In the most recent installment the hosts revisit their bookshelves and describe their new findings from rereading some faves, including Strong’s overwhelming reaction to T.C. Boyle‘s author photo.
Literary Disco
“Because I speak in tongues”
Friday would have been Ray Bradbury’s 94th birthday, which is why Dan Piepenbring, at The Paris Review Daily, looked back on one of Bradbury’s classic stories and picked out some choice quotes from his Art of Fiction interview. Piepenbring also pointed out that the story gets a mention in, among other places, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. You could supplement this by reading Tanjil Rashid on the author’s Middle East connection.
Obsessing Over Women
Parul Sehgal cures your “bland biography”-induced malaise by prescribing “three delightfully deranging books” in which writers “riff on the women who’ve consumed them.”
Antony Gormley, Suicide Artist
According to the New York Post, a new installation by British artist Antony Gormley–life-sized, cast iron sculptures of men placed on rooftops and building ledges around the city–has caused some New Yorkers and NYPD officers to take the sculptures for live jumpers. Oh, the price of art!
Esquire on Roth
Esquire offers a long profile of Philip Roth on the occasion of the publication of his 31st book, Nemesis. (Thanks, Sean)
Questioning Your Legacy
John Steinbeck’s son criticizes the state of Texas for invoking Of Mice and Men‘s Lennie Small, in ruling that certain mentally retarded individuals can be sentenced to the death penalty. The great-great-great granddaughter of Herman Melville wonders where her great-great-great-grandfather’s editor was when he wrote Moby Dick.
Famous Authors’ Pseudonyms
At The Washington Post, Tawny Tipples (not his real name) takes a look at famous authors’ pseudonyms, and why modern writers continue to hide behind them. (via Book Bench)
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Crosswords Uncrossed
Even if you’ve already seen the outstanding documentary Wordplay, you’ll still want to check out this Atlantic article on how Will Shortz makes his New York Times crossword puzzles.
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Puffed Up
Don’t blame Amazon or Goodreads for authors writing rave reviews of their own work. Writers have been self-promoting since the 1700s, when it was called “puffery.” As Nicholas Mason writes for Symposium Magazine, “Nearly every British writer of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries either participated in or benefitted from ginned-up book reviews.” The list of puffed up authors includes Mary Wollstonecraft, Walter Scott, and Mary Shelley.