PSA: The ebook of Infinite Jest now goes for just $4.99. (Might just be a limited time thing.)
DFW PSA
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The Second Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Biographer Fiona Sampson reflects on the life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose forced isolation due to respiratory illness led her to find an escape through writing.
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Flynn, Strayed, and Likability
“That’s always been part of my goal — to show the dark side of women. Men write about bad men all the time, and they’re called antiheroes. … What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations, not necessarily for a hero’s journey. It’s to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic.” Gillian Flynn and Cheryl Strayed talk with The New York Times about the adaptations for Gone Girl, Wild, and writing credible characters. Their conversation pairs well with our own Edan Lepucki‘s essay on likability in fiction.
To Go Boldly? What?
There are times when it’s a bad idea to wantonly split an infinitive. But there are other times, grammar Nazis, when it’s really okay to chill out.
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Hedging Against Future Risk
Recommended Reading: This excerpt from Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow.
A Writer Away
“War veterans experience something called hypervigilance, a mental state of continual alertness for danger. I have a minor version of this, a writer’s version. For me, danger lies in the sound of a footstep, a spoken word. Anyone could destroy the fragile construction I have to make each day.” Roxana Robinson writes for VQR about the writer’s need for solitude. For more from Robinson, be sure to check out her essay for The Millions on Edith Wharton.
Margaret Atwood Talks Twitter
“Time goes all stretchy in the Twittersphere, just as it does in those folk songs in which the hero spends a night with the queen of the faeries and then returns to find that 100 years have passed and all his friends are dead…” Margaret Atwood talks Twitter with Robert McCrum.
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