Here are some things about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle you can learn from this questionnaire: he used the word “ditto;” he reserved his greatest admiration for “men who do their duty without fuss;” and he seems to have been quite happy with being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
“Hope this is clear”
Banana Yoshimoto Interview
Banana Yoshimoto, whose novel The Lake was recently shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize, does an interview with Melville House.
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Viva the Memoir!
Deb Olin Unferth's memoir Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War hits shelves today. To celebrate the genre, she's curated a special section in this month's Guernica, with selections by Joshua Cohen and Rozalia Jovanovic, and forthcoming pieces by Porochista Khakpour and Clancy Martin.
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What Eats at You
"Define your character’s obsession. Take that obsession and dig up all the language that surrounds it or alludes to it. Rewrite your story using as much of that language as possible." Molly Prentiss for Amazon Author Insights on using personal preoccupations to bring your narratives to life.
What’s the Point
Recommended reading: What's the point of handwriting, anyway?
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Of Rainfall and Fluffy Bathrobes
You've probably heard the internet adage, "If it exists, there is a porn of it." Never has that been truer than in the case of the political erotica of 2016. From a particularly colorful Cruz/Rubio series: “'Who is this Hillary you’ve been texting?' Rubio asks Cruz. 'Saying things like ‘meet me when Marco’s not home,’ ‘I can hook you up,’ ‘what’s the price’ … don’t act all naïve right now!'"
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Double Take on Double Fold
In his 2001 treatise, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, Nicholson Baker lamented the wholesale transfer of newspaper archives to microfilm and the subsequent destruction of the originals (A recent essay here at The Millions argued that this is still a big problem). But, according to an article in The Missourian newspaper, microfilm may at least be far more permanent than easily corrupted digital archives. As executive editor Tom Warhover notes: "How about those perfectly preserved newspaper pages that have been digitally fossilized? They're usually stored on hard drives, which can wear out quicker than your grandmother's underwear."
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