It’s 1957. You’re Truman Capote. Your editor at The New Yorker, inspired in part by an excellent sense of humor, has asked you to write about an upcoming film (based on a novel by James Michener) that stars none other than Marlon Brando. How do you handle it?
Encountering an Enfant Terrible
“Queries are unacceptable”
Recommended Reading: Willy Blackmore talking to Matthew J.X. Malady about the time he tried to be a literary agent.
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Up to Scratch
What’s better than being a writer? A writer who gets paid. Manjula Martin and Jane Friedman have launched the new digital magazine Scratch, which gives writers information on how to advocate for their work. The preview issue is free and contains essays on what freelancers can learn from street vendors, Cord Jefferson on outgrowing his materialism, and an interview with Jonathan Franzen. You can subscribe here.
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Olivia Laing Conjures Up Complicated and Difficult People
Olivia Laing discusses her new book, Everybody: A Book About Freedom, and why she chose the idiosyncratic Wilhelm Reich as its central figure.
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When Good Doesn’t Win the Day
Recommended Listening: On NPR’s All Things Considered, Petra Mayer offers advice to “literature’s unpunished villains.”
The 2015 IMPAC Dublin Longlist
This morning, the longlist for the 2015 IMPAC Dublin award came out, and the nominees include some familiar names. Year in Reading alum Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah is on there, as is Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane (reviewed here by our own Tess Malone), Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (which won this year’s Pulitzer) and The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (whom you can learn more about in this essay by our own Bill Morris).
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A Stop-Motion Valentine
A little stop-motion film qua valentine that might appeal to V-day nonbelievers.
Beer-Hall Brute
Alright, time to fess up – who keeps buying all these Mein Kampfs? This piece from The Daily Beast takes a look at Hitler’s 800-page tome and questions why people continue to buy it despite the fact that “it might be dull as one of those many lunchtime monologues that bored Frau Goebbels cross-eyed.”
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You May Call Me Bobby, Or You May Call Me Zimmy
In more “Dylan at 70” news, the knowledgeable Ed Ward reviews the compilation How Many Roads: Black America Sings Bob Dylan for The Oxford American. (Editor’s Note: The omission from this album of Nina Simone‘s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and Ben E. King‘s “Lay Lady Lay” are both unconscionable.)
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