Riffing on R&B singer Ernie K-Doe’s one-time statement, Chris Rose writes in the Oxford American, “I’m almost positive that all music, at least all American music, comes from Louisiana.” The essay appears in this year’s OA Southern Music Issue, a reliably excellent source of tunes and writing. Indeed, as Dwight Garner put it in The New York Times, the CDs that accompany each annual issue “practically belong in the Smithsonian.”
Louisiana: Where Music Was Born
Write This Down
“Does handwriting matter?” That’s the question some researchers are working to answer and that Maria Konnikova tackles in a piece for The New York Times. The article ends by suggesting that “with handwriting, the very act of putting it down forces you to focus on what’s important… maybe it helps you think better,” which is doubtlessly encouraging to every writer who works on their drafts in longhand.
Granta’s Horror Issue
Granta‘s “Horror” issue was published just in time for Halloween, and I can’t think of a better way to whet your appetite than to read Daniel Alarcón‘s “The Ground Floor.”
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It’s Not TV, It’s Jonathan Franzen.
To celebrate the official HBO adaptation of Jonathan Franzen‘s The Corrections, The New Yorker has compiled a list of “Franzen Facts.”
Tuesday New Releases – Dan Brown Edition
Booksellers across the country have loaded up dollies with towers of boxes and carted them to the front of the store. Amazon has broken into its super-secret, double-locked, chain-link fence. Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol is here. Understandably, other publishers have ceded this Tuesday almost entirely to the Dan Brown hype machine, but those looking for something (very) different can today find Joyce Carol Oates doing the zombie thing (not really) and the latest from Tao Lin.
“Maybe she’s building a tomb”
Tampa author Alissa Nutting has a short, strange, and untitled fiction piece up at Everyday Genius. It concerns a rapidly decomposing magazine editor who just won’t quit.
Commas, Commas, and More Commas
The outcome of a court judgment concerning a dispute between a dairy company and its delivery drivers hinged on a grammar. Specifically, what does the Oxford comma signify?
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Literary Maps of Another Kind
In anticipation of Adam Sternbergh’s novel, Shovel Ready, Chris Bilton and Sarah Liss collaborated on “the ultimate N.Y.C. dystopia map,” which serves as an amalgamation of “some of the darkest visions of the city.” Meanwhile, Jacob Silverman points us to a map of St. Petersburg, Russia, “made out of lines from Russian literature.” (Bonus: Sternbergh discusses his novel with the Los Angeles Times.)
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