Okay, so the deal with the famed and occasionally disdained New Yorker umlaut on words like “cooperate” is that it is not an umlaut, it is a diaeresis, and they’ll be holding onto it, thank you very much.
The Curse of the Diaeresis
Writing on Mute
Even though James McBride (new National Book Award winner for The Good Lord Bird) is an accomplished jazz musician, he doesn’t listen to any music while writing. “Because I’m a musician, listening to music is…it’s a bit like work for me,” he told The Daily Beast for the “How I Write” series.
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We Can’t All Be David Ebershoff
Recommended Reading: this essay by Sophia Knight on why she decided to quit her high-stakes job as a corporate editor in favor of a more modest writer’s income. If it’s publishing stories you’re after, here’s an old Millions favorite on whether or not to self-publish.
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The State of Literature in Translation Today
Chad Post ran the numbers to calculate “the state of literature in translation today,” and in so doing he found that AmazonCrossing has been publishing more works of fiction and poetry in translation than any other press except Dalkey Archive. Additionally, the “overall number of works of fiction in translation being published in the U.S. is growing pretty nicely.” To get a full account of what’s coming out this year, check out his 2013 Translation Database.
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Now That’s Will Power
How dedicated is Robert Caro to his task of identifying and faithfully portraying the character of Lyndon Johnson? So dedicated that he turned down free tickets to see Bryan Cranston’s play about the 36th President of the United States of America.
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The Case for Picture Books for All Ages
Amitava Kumar makes a case for more images to appear in literature for adults, as tools to prompt questions and multiple interpretations.
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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.”
God Help the Child
Meanwhile, in the commonwealth of Virginia, HB 516 is currently sailing through state legislature. What began as one mother’s outraged response to her 17-year-old son’s AP English assignment–reading Beloved by Toni Morrison–has morphed into a bill which would require school districts to do three things: flag any “sexually explicit” assigned material, allow parents to review all assigned readings to assess perceived levels of sexual explicitness, and finally, require teachers to provide alternate readings/avenues of study for any students whose parents deem particular content too inappropriate.
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On Book Reviews
Kyle Minor (In the Devil’s Territory) has written a delightful list of “Five Hazards of the Book Review Biz” for HTMLGiant.
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