Continuing Tin House’s great “The Art of The Sentence” series, Vishwas Gaitonde dives deep into the opening line from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. (Come on, we all know the one.) Be sure to catch Tin House‘s previous TAoTS series installments as well.
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
Meg Wolitzer Wonders
Recommended reading: Meg Wolitzer wonders "why are teenage girls drawn to books about mental instability?"
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I Wrote, Yes, But Not That
Uh-oh: Hemingway may not have written his famous six-word story.
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An American Lyric
Recommended Listening: Mary Doty, Linda Gregerson, and Jane Hirshfield discuss the history and nature of the lyric poem. Pair with Andrew Kay’s Millions essay on the power of poetry.
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“It’s a stirring moment, and then it’s finished.”
Recommended Reading: Kate Sweeney explores the business of environmentally-minded deep sea burial, which is offered by companies such as Georgia’s Eternal Reefs.
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Appearing Elsewhere
My essay on Zadie Foster Franzenides and the current state of literary aesthetics is in this weekend's New York Times Magazine.
The Thing About Author Interviews
“Most writers … don’t ask questions of a journalist,” writes How to Read a Novelist author John Freeman. But what of those that do? Over the course of a fifteen year career, Freeman has found that “what the novelists asked of me told me [a great deal] about them,” and that a big problem with the standard format for author interviews, after all, is that “the conventions of the interview deprive us of one thing a novelist does quite a bit, which is ask questions.” (Bonus: Freeman will be in conversation with Jennifer Egan Thursday night at McNally Jackson.)
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“How like a prison is my cubicle…”
In May, poet David Lehman wrote the first line of a sonnet about cubicle anomie and began crowdsourcing the rest. The completed 12-week project at The American Scholar is not merely a pretty great piece on its own, but a lesson in how to write one, line by line: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8/9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. You can submit your title suggestion as late as midnight on Sunday, but we suggest getting a start on it now, while the prison of work is still fresh in mind. (h/t The New York Times)
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Poussey Lives
Exciting news, Orange Is The New Black fans! Samira Wiley will be co-starring in the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.