Admit it: you never finished Finnegans Wake, did you?
Unread Classics
NoViolet Bulawayo on Sitting With Her Personal Ghosts
NoViolet Bulawayo discusses her new novel, Glory, a post-colonial fable about power, history, and the circular nature of both.
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“An American train can’t help but dream of the West”
Recommended Reading: this graphic short story by Ben Nadler and Alyssa Berg.
Well-informed ghosts
Kurt Anderson on the difference between writing a novel in first and third person voice: “Most third-person narrators are less like omniscient gods than exceedingly snoopy, well-informed ghosts. “
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Sheila Heti Transforms Her Diaries Into Autofiction
Sheila Heti turns her diary entries into an inventive work of autofiction for A New York Times subscriber-only newsletter initiative.
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Dispatches From ‘Nam
“In Saigon I always went to sleep stoned so I always lost my dreams, probably just as well, sock in deep and dim under that information and get whatever rest you could, wake up tapped of all images but the one remembered from the day before, with only the taste of a bad dream in your mouth like you’d been chewing on a roll of dirty old pennies in your sleep.” The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time series over at The Guardian soldiers on with its ninth pick, Michael Herr’s Dispatches.
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For the Grammarians
Who or whom? Which or that? Jon Gingerich has helpfully assembled a list of “20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes.”
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Early Birds
If you’ve ever wondered how old your favorite authors were when they hit their creative peaks, you’ll enjoy this graphic, which charts the ages at which well-known writers published their most famous works.
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I remember several years ago when the Modern Library named “Ulysses” the greatest novel of the 20th Century, several commentators wrote indignant responses which seemed to say indirectly “If it’s so great, how come I’VE never read it.” I tend to suspect a similar motive when I see headlines like this.
Finished it? Heck, I’ve never even started it.
Yep, never even dared to start it.