In an interview with Big Think back in 2008, David Remnick said of Philip Roth that the writer “would have been my father had Philip Roth not been a literary intellectual but rather an orthodontist in North Jersey.” At The New Yorker’s website, Remnick eulogizes Roth’s work upon his retirement. (Keith Meatto did the same thing for us.)
Writerly Relations
So wait, does this mean Martin Amis has read 50 Shades of Grey?
Thus spoke Martin Amis: "There's a bit more song in women's writing, there's more real sincerity in women's writing." Also, apparently women are better at writing sex scenes.
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“Stare at us stoned like eyes determined”
Rage Against the Machine frontman Zach De La Rocha has penned a poem dedicated to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Tuesday New Release Day: Gray; Wang; Khadivi; Ibrahim; Rieger
Out this week: Isadora by Amelia Gray; Chemistry by Weike Wang; A Good Country by Laleh Khadivi; Season of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim; and The Heirs by Susan Rieger. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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It’s Tuesday! It’s New Releases
The long, long awaited posthumous publication of Ralph Ellison's Three Days Before the Shooting... has arrived. Also newly out today (in the States) is William Boyd's Ordinary Thunderstorms.
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Strange Brew
Lorrie Moore once said in an interview that what’s good for writing is bad for life. In this vein, we might assume that coffee, which is bad for your health but good for your writing, neatly supports her conjecture. But what if it turns out that coffee is a detriment to creativity? Maria Konnikova investigates research that suggests this might be the case.
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The Thoreau Diet
"Thoreau did kill, cook and eat a woodchuck that was eating his beans. But he decided that was a lousy way to treat a woodchuck and he never did it again." In celebration of his bicentennial, NPR sets straight five myths about Henry David Thoreau's diet, including the pernicious canard that he stole pies from neighbor's windowsills. See also "My Summer with Henry," on reading Thoreau's Cape Cod on Cape Cod.
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