Ian McEwan stopped by BBC’s Radio4 flagship news program to discuss, among other things, his love for John Williams’s Stoner. The novel, as Claire Cameron reported for us last month, is currently flying off the shelves in the Netherlands. However since McEwan gave Williams’s forgotten masterpiece a shout out, UK buyers have been snapping up four copies per minute.
An American Bestseller Abroad
Glamour’s Page 194 Girl
At Glamour‘s blog, the fashion magazine shot heard round the world: a nude photo of a girl who–gasp!–wears a size 12 and doesn’t have a six-pack. And, she looks happy. Apparently, this is what readers of fashion magazines have been waiting for.
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“He says, ‘their hearts should be burned.’”
Jeff Sharlet traveled to Russia because he “wanted to see what ordinary LGBT life was like in a nation whose leaders have decided that ‘homosexualism’ is a threat to its ‘sexual sovereignty.’” What he found was unsettling and terrifying, but the courage of the LGBT community members he interviewed is also incredibly inspiring. Set aside time to read this one. It’s essential.
“A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment”
Recommended Listening: “A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment,” a new podcast from Sherman Alexie and Jess Walter.
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The Words of E.B. White
E. B. White is one of those writers you are liable to meet again and again in the course of a reading life, each time wearing a different expression. To children, he is the author of Charlotte’s Web; to college students, he is half of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Later on, he helped define the voice of the early New Yorker. Now all those Whites have been brought together in the pages of In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America’s Most Companionable of Writers, an anthology of quotations edited by his granddaughter Martha White.
Self’s the Man
Christopher Hitchens has a marvelous essay on Philip Larkin (curmudgeon, onanist, genius) at The Atlantic. Via 3 Quarks Daily.
An Animated Bradbury
“You write to please yourself. You write for the joy of writing. … The enthusiasm, the joy itself draws me. So that means every day of my life I’ve written. When the joy stops, I’ll stop writing.” Recommended viewing: an animated interview with Ray Bradbury.
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The First Book Flown to the Moon
Alyssa Lukpat on the tiny book Buzz Aldrin took with him on the history-making voyage to the moon.
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Beholden Like Us
It may comfort you to know that Susan Orlean claims to have “a sad dependence” on her iPhone. The New Yorker staff writer, who published an article (paywall) on the Twitter account Horse_ebooks this week, tells Bobby Finger that she had to buy a new battery case because she ran through the charge on her phone by the middle of the day.
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