“I took maybe ten more speed pills and sat in a stall and wrote a new chapter of Atlas Shrugged,” writes Ayn Rand (er, um, John Hodgman). “Perhaps twenty-five thousand words, all on toilet paper.”
Ask Ayn (Rand)
Four Hours of Chekhov
Recommended listening: Radio Open Source has been broadcasting Anton Chekhov's short stories, with voices including Chekhov translator and biographer Rosamund Bartlett, author Andre Dubus of House of Sand and Fog, and numerous other writers, actors, and scholars. "Chekhov makes you want to be a better person. He makes you want to live a better life." (Unpersuaded? Consider our essays on why reading Chekhov, unlike booze or smokes, will make you a better person in 2014.)
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Book Pirates
The American author is dead, long live the American author! At the New York Times, a eulogy.
Takeaway Point
Zadie Smith could write herself out of a Chinese takeout box, and that's exactly what she does in her essay on the differences between British and American takeout culture, "Take It Or Leave It," for The New Yorker. "I don’t think any nation should elevate service to the status of culture."
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Curios
Gerrard Winstanley's 1649 "The True Levellers Standard Advanced." The True Levellers were a radical Protestant sect that founded a commune in Surrey during the English Civil War. In this rather astonishing and neglected declaration, Winstanley argues that God intended the earth to be a common treasury for all and that disparities in property and power between the rich and the poor are unholy and need to be abolished. (Billy Bragg has a song on Back to Basics called "The World Turned Upside Down" that's based on the Diggers' Song, also written by Winstanley.)Bookride documents the surprising desirability of W.G. Sebald books among collectors. "At one point his books were making exceptional sums on Ebay and people wanted ephemera, posters, recordings and anything to do with his legendary walk from Lowestoft to Boulge." The Rings of Saturn is coveted in particular. Only a few hundred copies of the English first edition were printed and they mostly turn up in East Anglia.Many a freelance journalist has pondered the idea of an online marketplace for writing in recent years, one that might ease the inefficiencies and frustration of pitching articles. Attempting to fill that gap is Reporterist, a journalism marketplace. One of the founders offers up details of the project in an interview with the Online Journalism Review.
A rare thing, the antiquarian
The New York Times recently ran an in depth look at the process of learning to deal in rare books. Which made me think of The Monkey's Paw, a rare book store so good that twice now I've personally heard rare book dealers (at both Sellers and Newel and Paper Books) describe, with admiration and a dash of collegial envy, as everyone's favorite book store.
The Book Club to End All Book Clubs
A long discussion of Tenth of December that includes George Saunders himself? Why, Rumpus Book Club, you're too kind.
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