Because you’ve probably never bothered to get to know your stalwart writing companion: A history of the ballpoint pen.
Know thy bic
We’ll Miss Hitch
Vanity Fair remembers Christopher Hitchens, a favorite of ours who was always fun to root for, and who, as you’ve no doubt heard by now, died last night. Andrew Sullivan remembers an email exchange from happier times. Hitchens’ ebook from this year, The Enemy, is in our Hall of Fame, and we reviewed his memoir, Hitch-22, last year.
Formative Pancakes
“Everything I learned about writing, I learned from watching people.” David Sedaris talks with The Rumpus about IHOP and his newly published collection of diary entries Theft by Finding.
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A Reader’s Rebellion
“Trusting the literary press and the mechanisms of the market to curate the books we read and study is to hand over whole regions of literary curiosity and judgment before one even picks up a book.” On refusing to read. We’re not prepared to go quite that far, instead preferring our own Sonya Chung‘s practice of not finishing books.
Wimmer on Bolaño
Year in Reading alum Scott Esposito asks fellow Year in Reading alum Natasha Wimmer nine questions about Roberto Bolaño’s The Third Reich.
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Pulp Saint
From The Atlantic comes the case for canonizing G.K. Chesterton, the “Catholic convert and an oracular man of letters, a pneumatic cultural presence, an aphorist with the production rate of a pulp novelist.”
Poets by Post
The United States Post Office is going to debut ten postage stamps in 2012. The theme? Famous poets, of course. In anticipation, they’re encouraging people to share their favorite poems on their Facebook page.
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