For every download of “In Memory of a Friend, Teacher and Mentor,” Philip Roth’s eulogy to his high school teacher, the folks at Audible will donate a dollar to the Newark Public Library. Learn more in The Paris Review Daily’s new interview with Roth.
Formative Influence
Another book, another ghost
Oh, ghostwriter: that poorly-paid name snuck into the “Acknowledgements” section somewhere after agent’s agent and ex-wife’s third cousin. In the middle ground between Michael D’Orso, who spoke to The Millions of job satisfaction as a hired pen, and Sari Botton, whose reminisces are full of horror stories, Andrew Croft, author of 80 books that sold 10M copies under other people’s names, offers a circumspect take in his Guardian profile. “The ghost is advised never to forget that, at the end of the day, he or she ranks somewhere between a valet and a cleaner.”
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To Locate One’s Place in the World
Geoff Dyer Gets New York Times Column
Millions favorite Geoff Dyer, author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, is going to start writing a column for The New York Times‘ Book Review. “Reading Life” will detail “the ups and down of his long relationship with the written word. What do we do to books and what do books do to us? How do they delight and derange?” His first column can be found here.
The Young Girl Grows Old
In honor of Lolita’s 60th anniversary, Alexandra Kleeman, Josephine Livingstone, Anna Wiener, and seven other writers reread Nabokov’s magnum opus. Pair with this Millions essay about designing the book cover.
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Man-Keyv
Emily Dickinson wrote her poetry in a house in Amherst. Mark Twain wrote many of his best works on his estate in Connecticut. And Geoffrey Chaucer, it turns out, wrote in a cramped bachelor pad, nestled in the east side of the wall surrounding London. In The Spectator, a reading of Paul Strohm’s Chaucer’s Tale, which describes a pivotal year in the poet’s life.
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Biological Music
“Seaquence is an experiment in musical composition. Adopting a biological metaphor, you can create and combine musical lifeforms resulting in an organic, dynamic composition.”
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The End of Wall Street
In New York, Gabriel Sherman checks in on Wall Street and finds that the big money culture may be gone for good. “There has been a growing recognition on Wall Street that the system that had provided those million-dollar bonuses was built on a highly unstable foundation.”
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