To quote Raymond Chandler: “When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split.” Or, dispelling grammar myths, like not ending sentences with prepositions.
Calling All Grammar Nazis
“Tell me: am I too distant”
Recommended Reading: Two poems – “Bottle Curve” and “Self-Portrait as Q Source” – by Justin Carter.
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Ireland’s Debt; Debt to Ireland
John Jeremiah Sullivan writes about heritage, history, literature, and the Emerald Isle in this piece for The New York Times Magazine, “My Debt to Ireland.” In the essay, Sullivan talks about the Aran Islands, and in particular Dún Aonghasa. On our Tumblr, I’ve shared some photos I took at the place.
Scary Stories with Lorrie Moore
Looking for a way to spice up your short story? Add a ghost. “This is going to sound strange, but what your story really needs is a ghost,” Lorrie Moore said in an interview with The New York Times. She discussed her new professorship at Vanderbilt and her new short story collection, Bark, which, yes, does contain a ghost story.
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A Brilliant Loner
“Neither for the first nor last time in his life, Orwell was the brilliant loner who saw what others around him failed to notice.” Adam Hochschild writes on Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and his unique perspective on fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Vishwas Gaitonde takes us to Orwell’s first home in India.
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Smells Like Teen Dispirit
“I saw it as a breath of fresh dark honest night air. I could live in my grief and be weird in my grief.” A.N. Devers writes about her love of Twin Peaks for Longreads, situating the show within her contemporary experiences of losing her grandparents and her girlhood.
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Necessary Nabokov
Christopher Michel discusses The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov – a book that challenges the long-held consensus that Nabokov was merely an aesthete.
Bryan Washington on Creating Space in Publishing
The author hopes that his debut novel, Memorial, will pave the way for other unique stories.
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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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