If at some point in your life you lose a beloved pet, and if, while mourning, you decide to write an obituary, know this — whatever you write will not be as good as E.B. White’s tribute to his dog. (You can read more pieces like it in the perfectly-titled E.B. White on Dogs.)
RIP Daisy
“It was not intended to drive people crazy”
In a piece originally published in a 1913 edition of The Forerunner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman explains why she felt inspired to write “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
Stalk Famous New York Readers
Have some fun with this New York specific feature highlighted by Atlas Obscura. The New York Society Library is private member-based library and it has some pretty famous members, going all the way back to Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Due to the library’s excellent record keeping you can trace these famous members reading histories. “In the early 20th century, Library staff switched from big, blank ledger books to index cards for record keeping. Henceforth they archived cards only for “prominent” members, discarding the rest. The gap is major, but the surviving cards offer a lifetime of book recommendations.”
I Guess There Could Be More Intersections, Too
Imagine a Venn Diagram with two circles: Paul Murray and John Jeremiah Sullivan. Now imagine its intersection. Did you think of Axl Rose? You should’ve.
The Island of Last Chances
Have you ever had a script rejected? Did you reassure yourself it had to do with just about anything other than the quality of your writing? Well now’s the chance to put your money where your mouth is – a new Hollywood startup called Adaptive Studios is “rummaging through the trash” and breathing new life into dead movie scripts.
Weltschmerz
At Full Stop, the editors interview Susan Bernofsky, who directs the literary translation program at Columbia and has published translations of works by Robert Walser, among other writers. She talks about German phrases that rarely appear in English, as well as the ethics of translating a work faithfully: “I think it’s the translator’s responsibility to be so attuned to the requirements of a given text (and the universe of the author) that these inevitable interventions are always appropriate and never arbitrary or willful,” she says. You could also read Tanya Paperny on the translator Michael Henry Heim.
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Internet Tendency, Redesigned
The charmingly lo-fi McSweeney’s website gets a redesign and manages to stay charmingly lo-fi.
Trystero Coffee
At Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg has coffee with Thomas Pynchon–well, not exactly…
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