Rachel Syme set out to cover the failure of Dawn Powell’s diaries to sell at auction for the New Yorker and came away with a tender meditation on obsession, New York, and the business of biography.
a small, diamond-like space
The End of the Hemingway Embargo
2,000 recently digitized copies of Ernest Hemingway’s papers will be transferred from Cuba to Boston’s John F. Kennedy Library – this will be the first time copies of the papers will be available to U.S. researchers. As of right now, I don’t believe there are any plans to return the urinal Hemingway took from a Key West bar to its proper location in Sloppy Joe’s.
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Down to/Poetry
A couple weeks ago, we published our review of Ben Lerner’s 10:04, the follow-up to his debut Leaving the Atocha Station. At the Poetry Foundation’s blog, Adam Plunkett argues that 10:04 inadvertently reveals its author’s poetic training. The book, he says, “dissolves into a poem.”
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All Our Kids
Margaret Atwood wants to edit the Canadian national anthem. The MaddAddam author and Year in Reading alum thinks a phrase in the current lyrics — “true patriot love in all thy sons’ command” — needs to be changed to something more gender-neutral.
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Grief and Memory
Humans have been covering paintings, windows, and mirrors after the passing of loved ones for generations. Why do we feel the need to close off our connection to the outside world when we are grieving? Colin Dickey writes about the social, literary, and religious connotations of grief and memory at Hazlitt. At The Millions, Lidia Yuknavitch writes about channeling her grief into art.
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The Writer’s Bedroom
We recently ran a piece called “Where We Write,” in which our staff writers posted photographs of their work spaces. Apartment Therapy has taken it a step further and revealed where some famous and not-so-well-known writers slept. Turns out a bedroom, like a work space, speaks volumes about a writer. But one question remains: What the hell is Patti Smith doing on William S. Burroughs’s bed?