Wordplay
A Sense of Danger
Recommended Listening: Renata Adler’s Longform podcast on writing routines and the need for acquiring a sense of danger.
I Slide and Slide
“In the dark comes spiders out of art and first I’m sleuthed away. Measuring up the vying worlds. Meandering into the emphasised words but under neat speeches are oceanous platitudes and so I slide and slide.” An exclusive excerpt from Year in Reading alumna Eimear McBride’s new novel, The Lesser Bohemians, in The Times Literary Supplement.
Famous Authors’ Pseudonyms
At The Washington Post, Tawny Tipples (not his real name) takes a look at famous authors’ pseudonyms, and why modern writers continue to hide behind them. (via Book Bench)
President Obama, Literary Critic
“Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—T. S. Eliot is of this type.” President Obama wrote these words as a twenty-two-year-old student, but Edward Mendelson argues that Obama’s words as a literary critic reveal his tendencies as a politician. Check out our own Michael Bourne’s review of Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss, where Obama’s letter was originally published.