Now that Horse_ebooks as we knew it is dead (or alive, depending on your viewpoint), the Internet is convening to pay tribute to the Dadaist masterpiece. At Slate, Will Oremus opines that the feed was “pretty great” even when it was a spambot, while at The Globe and Mail, Navneen Alang argues that it’s “more wonderful today, not less.”
And Are We and Are We
From the Newsstand
This week has brought new issues of The Quarterly Conversation (including considerations of Herta Müller, Per Petterson, and Jonathan Swift); Lapham's Quarterly (The Arts & Letters issue, featuring Salman Rushdie); and Triple Canopy ("Hue and Cry")
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Write This Down
"Does handwriting matter?" That's the question some researchers are working to answer and that Maria Konnikova tackles in a piece for The New York Times. The article ends by suggesting that “with handwriting, the very act of putting it down forces you to focus on what’s important... maybe it helps you think better," which is doubtlessly encouraging to every writer who works on their drafts in longhand.
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Poems on Poems
“Of course, his word-pictures don’t define the art of poetry—nor are they meant to. In part they exemplify it; in part provide a warning that such an art eludes straightforward setting out in words.” On Horace’s and Archibald MacLeish’s Ars Poetica.
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Adichie Hints at Americanah Film
Now that we’ve casted the film adaptation of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, we’d like to turn your attention to Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Americanah, which may be involved in an upcoming collaboration with Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o. Adichie framed the possibility this way in a recent interview: “I'm going to do the mysterious thing and say that Lupita might be making an announcement very soon."
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Points of Entry
When somebody you’re talking to brings up a writer -- say Richard Russo -- that you haven’t read, but should have, you probably say you haven’t read them because you “just don’t where to start.” Unfortunately, the folks at Book Riot just published a book, Start Here, that might blow up your excuse.