DeAndre McCullough died last week at the age of 35. McCullough was famously portrayed as the young protagonist in David Simon and Edward Burns’s book The Corner, which went on to become its own HBO miniseries. The Wire later adopted aspects from both the book and the miniseries. The obituary Simon wrote is not to be missed.
DeAndre McCullough Dies
Poetic Prayer
“I’m interested in character. I’m especially interested in how language—story, memory, names, word choice—reflects and reveals character. The language of the Catholic Church—the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels—was in many ways my first poetry. ” Year in Reading alumna Alice McDermott discusses her short story, “These Short, Dark Days,” published in the latest The New Yorker.
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Draw a Novel
Recommended reading (and doodling): an excerpt from an upcoming translation of Martin Solares‘s How to Draw a Novel, complete with diagrams and squiggling lines. Pair with our own Hannah Gersen‘s look at authors’s methods for drawing and mapping their own novels-in-progress.
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20 Rules for Writing Detective Stories
“Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret society to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds.” -From the much-quoted 1928 essay by SS Van Dine, noted art critic and mystery writer, on the 20 rules for writing detective stories. (via Guardian)
The Restaurant Model of Medicine
“Doctors may be tempted to give patients what we want, even when it is not good for us.” Guernica has an excerpt from Eula Biss’s forthcoming On Immunity: An Innoculation, which we featured in our book preview.
I’ll Be Your Unicorn
When job interviews and Tinder combine, what is the outcome? Megan Sawey shows us at The Rumpus. Pair with an essay on day jobs and fiction writing.
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Real Life Rosebud
Last month, we got the gossip from Orson Welles. This month, the dirt is about him. His first film, Too Much Johnson, was recently rediscovered in Italy.
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Debt and David Graeber
Anthropologist and Melville House author David Graeber‘s Debt: The First 5,000 Years should be required reading for anyone hoping to understand economic trends. The author’s book is so great and topical that it’s earned a profile in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
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