“Recently, a friend told me she didn’t like pictures of herself because she never looked the way she thought she did in her head. I think this pretty much describes the universal horror that is looking at your own photos, and that’s why I love the selfie so much. It gives you all the controls to the story you are telling.” In defense of the selfie.
Look Away
Good Riddance
Recommended reading: Jason Arthur bids “Good Riddance to the Good-Bye-To-New-York Essay” for The Rumpus. Pair with Eryn Loeb‘s review of Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and our own Elizabeth Minkel‘s account of rereading Didion‘s original “Goodbye to All That.”
Sandra Cisneros on Reaching Non-Readers with Her Books
Sandra Cisneros reflects on the enduring legacy of The House on Mango Street and how it was able to reach audiences around the world.
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Interview with Margaret Drabble
Recommended reading: Lydia Perović talks with Margaret Drabble for The Believer about feminist fiction, the Aeneid, Iris Murdoch and writing female characters.
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German Literature Month
Oktoberfest may be over, but the inaugural German Literature Month is just beginning. If you’re wondering what to imbibe while you sit down with The Sorrows of Young Werther, Magic Mountain, and The Clown, Melville House’s MobyLives blog has you covered.
Titular Oddities
The shortlist for the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of 2010 has been announced. Among the hopefuls: Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way.
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When Literary Praise Goes Too Far
More amusement has been prompted by The History of Love author Nicole Krauss’s arguably over-the-top blurb for David Grossman’s To the End of the Land: “To read it is to have yourself taken apart, undone, touched at the place of your own essence; it is to be turned back, as if after a long absence, into a human being.” Following Guardian’s subsequent contest for who can write the most absurdly laudatory blurb for a Dan Brown novel, Laura Miller at Salon dissects why author endorsements are so unreliable.
I don’t hate the thing itself, but, boy, do I hate that word.