Adding to a review by Pamela Erens for The Millions, Zoë Heller reads Janet Malcolm’s Forty One False Starts for the New York Review of Books. Among other things, she concludes that the writer’s job, at least in Malcolm’s estimation, is “to vanquish mess.” (You could also read a review in The Nation I wrote about a few weeks ago.)
“A secret, writerly sympathy for the hoarder”
Wood on the Missing Bits of HHhH
James Wood's New Yorker review of Laurent Binet's HHhH, makes note of the sections of the book that were cut by editors (and name-checks The Millions). Here they are if you want to read them and learn more about the context behind the cuts.
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Reel Art
"'A good projectionist should be invisible,' he says, his small rectangular glasses steadied on his forehead. 'No one should be able to tell you’re in the booth changing the reels.'” A look at the hidden process of reel-to-reel cinema.
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Kanye West, Featuring Eustace Tilley
Kanye's Twitter feed meets the New Yorker caption contest: brilliant.
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Looking Outside
Recommended Reading: Tasha Golden on the Lone Genius myth.
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W.B. Yeats: Poet, Playwright, Magician
“Yeats wrote frankly about his vocation as a magician in several memoirs.” On how the occult drew in W. B. Yeats because “it was so deeply connected with his poetic craft.”
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My Life
Peg Plunkett was an 18th-century Dublin courtesan who decided one day to make some money by publishing a series of memoirs. Now, over two hundred years after Plunkett sketched out her life story, Professor Julie Peakman has rewritten all three volumes for a modern audience. In a piece for The New Statesman, Sarah Dunant reviews her edition of Plunkett's oeuvre.
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Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies Coming in May
Big news for fans of Hilary Mantel and her Booker-winning (and Millions Hall of Famer) Wolf Hall. The U.S. release date for the much anticipated Wolf Hall sequel Bring Up the Bodies has been moved up from the fall to May 22nd to coincide with the U.K. release date.
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