When you read silently, are you really reading silently? Or, as some researchers hypothesized in a recent study, are you “making ‘sound’ in your head?”
“Silent” Reading
Their Etceteras
Whether you admire the work of e.e. cummings or think of him mainly as the inspiration for your high school’s worst poet, you’ll enjoy this excerpt of Susan Cheever’s new biography, which touches on the poet’s later years and his relationship with Cheever’s father. The two (contrasting) money quotes here are Malcolm Cowley’s claim that cummings was “the most brilliant monologuist I have known” and this exasperated question posed by Helen Vendler: “What is wrong with a man who writes this?
SF’s Thriving Libraries
Book lovers say it’s nothing to keep quiet about: San Francisco’s libraries are thriving.
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Audible Writers
Apropos of my literary YouTube posts, our own Mark O’Connell riffs on the speaking voice of several authors.
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Bookstore MFA
“There’s something about shopping for books where you’re open for anything. You’re faced with a wall of books, and you don’t know anything about most of them. At some point, it’s just you and the poems.” Carl Adamshick talks with the Los Angeles Review of Books about Powell’s and the “bookstore MFA.” Pair with our own Janet Potter‘s essay on loving bookshops.
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