What’s a Wordsworth scholar to do when nature offers him no epiphanies?
I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
I’m Not Sexist
“Their deliberately childless life, their cat, Converse (named not for the shoe but for the political scientist), their free-range beef and nights and weekends of reading and grading and high-quality television series—it was fine and a little horrible. She gets it.” It shouldn’t take much convincing to get you to go and read some new fiction by Curtis Sittenfeld, Gender Studies, over at The New Yorker.
●
●
“Trippingly on the tongue”
“Inspired by working with Kevin Spacey, Sir Trevor Nunn has claimed that American accents are ‘closer’ than contemporary English to the accents of those used in the Bard’s day.” Take that, England!
●
●
You’ve Probably Never Heard of Him
Is Mark SaFranko the greatest American writer you’ve never heard of? We don’t know, but 3:AM Magazine makes a strong case in this interview with the author who they call an heir to Charles Bukowski and John Fante. Now you’ve heard of him, at least.
●
●
2017’s Independent Bookstore Day
Next Saturday (April 29) is Independent Bookstore Day! If you’re looking for a place to celebrate, check out our staff recommendations of tried and true mainstays. You can also map out the stores Janet Potter’s “bookstore resume,” which she freely admits has taken “the shape of a relationship history.”
●
●
“So, what’s your story?”
As if you weren’t in love with Augustus Waters already, the first official trailer from The Fault in Our Stars film is out, and Ansel Elgort is quite the charmer. The film releases on June 6th, but if you still haven’t read the book, here’s our own Janet Potter’s review.
Goodbye To All That
Benjamin Anastas has bid goodbye to the Twitter Village, and he thinks more writers should do the same. “There is a longing built into our online lives that can lead us to healthy attachments with multiple partners, a kind of polyamory of the mind, but it can also encourage the furtive transmission of waxed-chest photos and cock-shots,” he writes. “These are extreme examples of the kind of lonely misfires that Twitter allows, but I felt the temptation to seek comfort from my Twitter feed often enough to realize that it was only a matter of time before I did something embarrassing.”
●
●
Writers on Writing
Recommended listening: Writers on Writing, a playlist of TED talks from NPR that pair well with our own Nick Ripatrazone‘s essay on “vertical writing” and Michelle Huneven‘s breakdown of “The Trouble With Writing.”
●
●