By now the overlap between writers and drug addicts is pretty well-known, but it wasn’t so well-known back when Thomas De Quincey wrote Confessions of an English Opium Eater. In the essay, De Quincey admitted that not only was he addicted to opium, he suspected he’d ingested more of the substance than any other man save Coleridge. (Incidentally, we reviewed a novel by Year in Reading alumnus Jeet Thayil that largely took place in an opium den.)
Den Father
Fake Phone Numbers
Recommended reading: This great flash fiction piece by Ben Miller over at the Tin House Open Bar. If we’re talking “flash fiction,” then we’d better mention this piece from The Millions on Lydia Davis and everyone’s favorite 140-character medium, Twitter.
Ben Marcus’s Language
“Language starts to shut down the strength and power and strangeness of what it means to be a person in the world.” At The Rumpus, Ben Marcus discusses how he uses language in his writing and his new short story collection, Leaving the Sea (featured in our 2014 book preview.) Pair with: Our own Adam Boretz’s interview with Marcus and our review of The Flame Alphabet.
Teachable Moments
Lots of writers have stories about creative writing classes that changed their lives. The remembrance of the pivotal class is a mini-genre in itself. At The Rumpus, Warren Adler writes about his own life-changing experience, looking back on a class he took at the New School all the way back in 1949.
A Bookish Father’s Day
Looking for the perfect book for Father’s Day, but didn’t find quite what you were looking for in our list? Lit Hub has some supplemental titles you might be interested in.
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“Good evening.”
While you wait around for Hitchcock to hit theaters, you’ve got plenty of time to check out this online record of thirteen storyboards from the English director’s classic films.
“Crouching alone near some tiny ecosystem”
Recommended Reading: Laura Miller on Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation.
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Disappearing Welsh
If there existed a trophy for the ugliest-looking but prettiest-sounding language, then the 721,700 living Welsh speakers would boast more championships than Alabama’s football team. Yes, the Welsh. They of the villages Llangefni and Llanfairfechan. (To say nothing of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.) Wouldn’t it be a shame for such a language to disappear? For writing in this language to stop being published? Stanford’s Cynthia Haven thinks so.
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