Nearing the end of your epic NaNoWriMo novel? The good folks at Electric Literature found some music to aid your concentration.
Brain Food
I’d Prefer Not To
“REPORTER: You’ve reportedly conveyed to Judge Garland that if he comes knocking on your office door he’ll be wasting his time. But would you deign to meet with him somewhere off the grounds of the U.S. Capitol? Say, at a Starbucks? BARTLEBY: I would prefer not to.” This Bartleby, the Senator: A Story of Merrick Garland (not to be confused with the Bartleby, the Scrivener).
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Tilting at Political Office
“He represents a failure of empiricism — an unreliability arising not from the absence of rationality, but from the stubborn complexity of perception. This, I would argue, is precisely how the 2016 election went down.” In an article for The Los Angeles Review of Books, Aaron R. Hanlon argues that Cervantes’ classic provides the perfect framework for understanding contemporary America, concluding that “Don Quixote is such a player in US politics that he might as well run for office.” Our own C. Max Magee read Quixote not long after founding the site, deeming it “essential to all who wish to understand ‘the novel’ as a literary form.”
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Does This Mean Lewis Lapham is Morpheus?
Picador’s Gabrielle Gantz is holding monthly conversations with bloggers, and she posts the results on the publishing house’s fantastic Tumblr. Here she interviews Aidan Flax-Clark, associate editor of Lapham’s Quarterly, and gets him to discuss the similarities between his research and The Matrix.
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You can file me under Ishmael.
Have you ever wanted to convert a book into a patent application? Well now you can.
Sentenced to Death
Brace yourself for disgusting, convoluted metaphors and run-on sentences. The winners of the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the worst opening sentence to an imaginary novel have been announced.
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The End of the Poe Vigil
It’s been nearly three years since an unknown man last marked Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday by leaving three roses and cognac at Poe’s grave. Today is Poe’s birthday and “Poe fans are planning one last vigil this week before calling an end” to the decades-long tradition of watching the mystery mourner pay his respects. (via)
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The Best Episode of Science Friday Ever?
Public radio program Science Friday has quite a lineup on tap this week: “Science and art often seem to develop in separate silos, but many thinkers are inspired by both. Novelist Cormac McCarthy, filmmaker Werner Herzog, and physicist Lawrence Krauss discuss science as inspiration for art and Herzog’s new film on the earliest known cave paintings.” (via @maudnewton)
I Worry That I Don’t Have a Title Yet
“I worry that people in the city where the novel is based will take issue, all kinds of issue, with it. I worry that readers will be like who cares.” Here are all the things you should be worried about while working on a novel, helpfully brought to light by Susannah Felts at The Literary Hub.