Researchers at Comanche Nation College and Texas Tech University are creating a digital archive to reconstruct the Comanche language before its 25 remaining speakers die out. Meanwhile, researchers from Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences have recorded audio and video footage of twenty isolated Alaskans who speak a unique form of the Russian language. (Bonus: An Australian researcher recently uncovered a whole new Aboriginal dialect.)
Save the Languages
The Thriller Code
“Rather than outlining your plot in chronological order, try outlining your plot as if it were a candle burning at both ends. Begin the process by writing your first and last chapter simultaneously.” Amazon Author Insights gathers, well, insights on writing from Dan Brown and other famous crime and thriller novelists. (Full disclosure: Amazon helps us pay the bills around here!) We will also never not recommend this evergreen piece from our own archives, of writers on the best advice they ever received.
Things Look Up
Recommended Reading: Oliver Burkeman on a new group of optimistic thinkers.
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On the Day Job
Infographic of the Week: Famous authors had day jobs, too. Check out this infographic from Adzuna to find out what J.M. Coetzee, George R.R. Martin, J. K. Rowling, and more did before (or while) they published novels. Our own Emily St. John Mandel writes about the struggle to balance a day job and a creative life.
The Rights of Southern Writers
Recent estate sales, auctions, and rights deals concerning the legacy and works of William Faulkner are “raising complex questions about what happens to the works of great writers after they die,” writes Stefanie Cohen. “For their part, Faulkner’s heirs say they aim to both honor the writer’s work and raise funds.” (Bonus: the ongoing, public legal battle over rights to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.)
The Organist Arrives
Our friends at The Believer teamed up with Los Angeles radio station KCRW to launch a monthly podcast. Check out the first episode of The Organist to hear from George Saunders, Nick Offerman, Greil Marcus and more.
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The Fall of “Man”
In The Age of The Crisis of Man, a new book by n + 1 co-founder and editor Mark Greif, the author examines the life and death of the concept of “man,” aka a unified humankind that could be said to suffer from particular conflicts. It was born in the thirties, with the rise of Fascism, but persisted for decades, eventually giving way to a more diversified view of humanity. In Tablet, Adam Kirsch dives into Greif’s arguments.
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