At The Nervous Breakdown, Brad Listi sits down with Michelle Orange, who talks about writing ledes, Pauline Kael, and the story behind her new book, This is Running For Your Life. (For more, go check out her interview with our own Hannah Gersen.)
Talking with Michelle Orange
“You said I’d be the next Keith Richards.”
Some copies of Mad About the Boy – the latest installment in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones series – included passages from British actor David Jason’s memoir, which was being released on the same day. Supposedly the entire thing was one big mistake. Over at the LA Times, however, Dan Zevin imagines “a juicier scenario.”
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The Invention of the Emoticon :(
If you thought the English language went downhill when the emoticon was introduced, you can blame a 17th-century poet. Editor Levi Stahl found that English poet Robert Herrick used the first emoticon in his 1648 poem "To Fortune." As Herrick writes, "Tumble me down, and I will sit/ Upon my ruines (smiling yet :)" For more on the potential ruin of language, read Fiona Maazel's piece on commercial grammar.
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Blue Nights
The secret subject of Joan Didion’s work has always been her troubled daughter. Her wrenching new memoir, Blue Nights, tells us why.
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Done Deals
Longtime writers know how hard it can be to tell when a piece is finished. Tolstoy famously tried to revise War and Peace right up to the book's publication. At the Ploughshares blog, Amy Jo Burns offers tips for evaluating a piece before deciding to give it to someone else.
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VQR Debuts Redesigned Website, Lifts Paywall
The Virginia Quarterly Review launched their redesigned website this week, and it’s a sight to behold. To celebrate the occasion, the magazine has dropped its paywall through Valentine’s Day, so start exploring. I recommend starting with Kevin Young’s recent poem, “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,” which he composed entirely out of song lyrics.
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The Complete Spy Magazine, Now Online
Like a time machine to the first Bush Administration, the complete archives of the late, lamented, and hugely influential Spy Magazine are now apparently available through Google Books (via). We'd offer a few keywords to get you started, but the riches are too many. Okay, fine. You twisted our collective arm. Ivana Trump. Henry Kissinger. O.J. Celebrity Pro-Am Ironman Nightlife Decathalon. Go nuts.
Praise for Emily St. John Mandel’s The Singer’s Gun
The Los Angeles Times loves Emily St. John Mandel's latest novel The Singer's Gun.
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Shirley Jackson in the Woods
The New Yorker has published another recently discovered Shirley Jackson short story "The Man in the Woods," a fairy tale that takes on some classic mythology. According to her son, it's one of many new stories found in her archives, and we can expect a new collection next year. "What was surprising to us was not that she was so prolific and had left behind so much unseen work but, rather, the quality of that work," Laurence Jackson Hyman said.
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