“So much has been written about New York City as a city of histories—rich and public, deep and private. Commerce and bodies ebb and flow. For every New Yorker, there is a ghost city under the tangible one; this second, invisible layer contains the tangled web of memory and geography. I certainly have my fair share of associative ghosts; we all do. But New York City is also a city of forgetting, for better and for worse, and often against our best wishes.” Anna Wiener on the coping strategies of New Yorkers.
The Forgotten Delivery Man
Tiny Worlds
Recommended Reading: On the great depth and detail of tiny worlds in Ploughshares. An example of these worlds, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories takes short fiction “to the extreme.”
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Very Secret and Odd
Recommended Reading: Søren Kierkegaard and Anna Akhmatova overheard whispering on a stairwell.
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“Hardly Shakesperean at first”
Recommended Reading: Ted Widmer on the miscellaneous writings of Abraham Lincoln.
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The Literary Rumor Mill
From Flavorwire, a look at fascinating literary rumors, from Mark Twain‘s premature death to Stephen King‘s supposed blindness.
Best (and Worst) Book Trailers
Melville House announced its Moby Award winners the week for book trailers in a number of serious and silly categories. (Full disclosure: I was a judge)
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Making the Puzzle More Hip
Meet the 23-year-old who’s been tasked with “injecting some swag” into the “traditionally conservative New York Times [crossword] puzzle.”
Kool As the Other Side of the Pillow
“If you lack a competent distributor down here, then consider me at your service. Nothing would make me happier than to drive Salems off the market for good and ever. It’s without a doubt the foulest cigarette in the history of tobacco-addicted man—a tasteless mish-mash of paper and dry weeds.” Boy, Hunter S. Thompson really hated Salems.
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