Recommended Reading: “Nudists” by David James Poissant.
Naked Reading
Plotto
Who, or what, is Plotto? Find out about the art of mechanized storytelling, or what a cardboard robot has to do with melodrama and Law & Order.
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Critterati
Happy Halloween! At the New Yorker, the winners of the dress your pet as a literary character contest. Don’t miss the honorable mentions (I’m partial to the feline Moby Dick).
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“How I Read”
“We all read from different places, different backgrounds, and my meeting with Proust or Woolf, or Lydia Davis or J. M. Coetzee, will not be yours, nor should it be. On the other hand I do believe reading is an active skill, an art even, certainly not a question of passive absorption. … [so] there must be techniques and tools that everyone can use or try, even if we use them differently.” Tim Parks explains how he reads for The New York Review of Books.
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Speculation
“The only kind of drama is human drama. What matters is how deep you dig.” At the Ploughshares blog, a case for science fiction over “dysfunctional family dramas.”
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Entourage v. Mad Men
Is “Entourage” just “Mad Men” set in modern times? This article, of course, must be paired with Carles‘ Grantland piece, “I Don’t Want to Bro Up, I’m an ‘Entourage’ Kid.”