The more you know! In Victorian times, sitting for a photograph could last hours due to primitive camera technology and the need for long, long exposures. This, predictably, didn’t jibe with kids, and so parents had to adopt an ingenious workaround: disguising themselves in the picture so they could physically restrain the youngsters. (Don’t miss Part 2, either.)
How They Did It Before Sears
On Board The Pequod
Recommended reading: Ben Shattuck spends a night and a day aboard a New England whaling ship in an attempt to better understand Ishmael’s (and Melville‘s) experiences, and combines Moby-Dick excerpts with his own accounts of life onboard in a piece for The Atlantic.
Poetry of Brotherhood
Recommended Reading: The Missouri Review’s new poem of the week, Kai Carlson-Wee’s “Jesse James Days,” which also won its 2013 Editors’ Prize. “If I carried your name to the skateparks and railroad temples of rust, would you come to me, brother.”
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OWS lit down the line?
Christian Lorentzen wonders, in Book Forum, what the first OWS novels will be like. He anticipates them showing up next year, but I’m thinking we’ve already got at least two, though they were both published well before Occupy: Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story ought to fit the bill, and, of course, there’s that famous Melville story about Wall Street, but I’d prefer not to talk about it when I could just direct you to Hannah Gersen’s piece instead.
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Just Stop There
What do Susan Sontag, Joan Didion and Year in Reading alumna Margaret Atwood have in common? They’re all great writers — and they all had only one kid.
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Fitzgerald’s Football
“F. Scott Fitzgerald is known as one of America’s greatest authors, but was he also responsible for one of football’s most important strategic advances? Maybe. Possibly. Probably not.” Kevin Draper writes about Fitzgerald’s love and possible genius for the game.
The Character of Retreat
Part Into the Wild, part Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Howard Axelrod’s The Point of Vanishing is the story of his two years spent in profound solitude in the Vermont wilderness. Called “torture” by prison rights activists and “a threat to mental stability” by psychologists, Axelrod’s decision to sequester himself from society was nothing if not extreme. Alexander Supertramp would be proud.
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Lit-Mag Editors Stop Being Polite, Start Getting Real
A couple dozen leading literary magazine editors recently found themselves debating “submission fees” in a long, heated, and candid listserv discussion. The complete transcript – names have been changed to protect the innocent – is alternately depressing and heartening. It’s a must-read for anyone who publishes in little magazines, or plans to, or is just curious about how editors see themselves. (Update (11/12): Apparently, the literary magazine that published this content on its website had not been authorized to do so by the Council of Literary Magazines and Small Presses, which administers the listserv. The content has since been taken down; we’ve de-activated the link to reflect that.)
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When Life Gives You Rob Ford, What More Do You Require?
PSA: Little Brother is releasing a special issue entitled Everything Is Fine. The kicker? The issue is dedicated to fiction about embattled Toronto mayor Rob Ford. (P.S. If you aren’t familiar with LB, it’s the magazine run by Millions Tumblr-er emeritus Emily M. Keeler.)
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