The folks at Harper’s Bazaar (not Harper’s Magazine) are launching a new short story competition, and the grand prize is wild: an all-expenses-paid weeklong stay on a private Scottish island, publication in the May 2014 issue of the magazine and a first-edition book from the Asprey’s Fine and Rare Books Department, worth up to £3,000. (And yes, that’s pounds, not dollars.)
Our Lucrative Profession
Silvertongued Wilson
Though Mark Twain first gained notoriety after publishing an essay about a famous jumping frog, the onetime Samuel Clemens didn’t really hit his stride until he became a public speaker, as the money he accrued from reading in front of audiences gave him a steady source of income. At Salon, Ben Tarnoff recounts Twain’s journey to the podium, one laid out more broadly in Tarnoff’s book about a group of San Francisco writers.
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The Roberto Bolaño Bubble
“The continued publication and popular packaging of [Roberto Bolaño’s] incomplete work may actually be diluting his reputation as a writer of varied talents and fearless ambition.” Sam Carter is wary of The Roberto Bolaño Bubble.
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Life and Fate and Life and Fate
Stephen Dodson wasn’t the only one inspired to write about Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate this month. Over at The New Republic, Adam Kirsch calls Grossman’s masterpiece one of the world’s “very greatest Holocaust novels.”
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Dedicated Fans of that Old Book Smell
The British Library paid £9m to buy a copy of St Cuthbert Gospel, the oldest intact European book in existence.
Best of Poetry
Does poetry tickle your fancy? Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky and check out these few different lists of the best poetry books of 2015, from sources like The Guardian and Tin House. Our own Year in Reading series is also chock full of poetry recommendations.
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Poetic Graphics
This week in book-related graphics: An image-heavy test that combines poetry with traffic signs from Ploughshares, and an infographic breaking down the most fearsome (and most useless) characters in The Iliad.
Writers Pensions: Should We Have Them, Too?
More than 80 published writers in Buenos Aires receive monthly pensions meant to strengthen to “vertebral column of society.” Sums can reach nearly $900 a month.