Daniel Woodrell was so busy dodging bill collectors that he almost missed a telegram from an agent interested in his first novel, Under the Bright Lights. He discusses his writing career, the film adaptation of Winter’s Bone, and how he’s used the same coffee mug since 1974 for The Daily Beast’s “How I Write” series.
Telegram for You, Sir
Where the Books Are
Ever visited a new city and found yourself in need of a bookstore? Well, if it happens again, and you’re in the US, you can just use Google Maps, which now features the locations of the country’s public libraries and bookstores. (h/t Bookforum)
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Using Neuroscience To Study Art
Dutch researchers are using moistened electrode caps to measure the brain waves, heart rate, galvanic skin response and facial expressions on an author and fifty of his readers. They hope to find patterns “that may help illuminate links between the way art is created and enjoyed, and possibly the nature of creativity itself.”
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Too Much to Process
A couple weeks ago, Brian Ted Jones reviewed The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, which “takes place on the margins of a grand, cosmic struggle.” Not long afterwards, at The Rumpus, Woody Brown offered a somewhat negative take on the book, arguing that Mitchell makes it too difficult for the reader to suspend her disbelief. You could also read Brown’s Millions review of Haruki Murakami’s new novel.
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Cowboys and Indians?
“Even if they have to fly to Pakistan to do it, our cowboys are always hunting Indians.” Amira Jarmakani on the perpetuation of Wild West stories even though our idea of the frontier has changed.
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Navajo Nation’s First Poet Laureate
“The Navajo Nation’s first-ever Poet Laureate has been named and will be officially introduced to the public on May 17.”
The Women Who Reclaimed the Streets
“For a woman to be a flâneuse, first and foremost, she’s got to be a walker – someone who gets to know the city by wandering its streets, investigating its dark corners, peering behind façades, penetrating into secret courtyards. Virginia Woolf called it ‘street haunting’ in an essay by that name: sailing out into a winter evening, surrounded by the ‘champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets,’ we leave the things that define us at home, and become ‘part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers.’” On the female flâneur. Also check out this Millions essay about the flâneur in modern fiction.
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