“Sometimes I fear that Midwestern authors are seen from a similar vantage point: that many of us are ‘fly-over writers’ to whom readers wave (or just ignore completely) as they make their way to Saul Bellow and Stuart Dybek and Marilynne Robinson. I fear that these bigger names, along with a few others (Charles Baxter, Lorrie Moore), are seen as exceptions to the general rule that little of cultural worth grows in this flat, middle stretch of the country.” On the plight of the literary Midwesterner.
The View from Out Here
Long Live Books!
Do you have an ereader but miss the look and feel of a gorgeous hardcover book? Do you want people to think you’re all about print when in fact you are riding the digital wave? Then you simply must get this incredible Book sleeve for your iPad, Macbook or Kindle. (Via Peter Knox’s tumblr blog)
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It & Co.
For The Brooklyn Rail, John Ashbery answers some questions about writing in French, crushes on boys, and the presence of “it.” As he puts it, “I’m sort of notorious for my use of the pronoun ‘it’ without explaining what it means, which somehow never seemed a problem to me.”
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Sherman Alexie’s ‘Part-Time Indian’ Turns 10
To celebrate its 10th birthday, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie’s National Book Award winning YA novel, is being reissued. The special anniversary edition features a new introduction by Jacqueline Woodson, family photographs, a new afterward, and an excerpt from the book’s upcoming sequel, Rowdy, Rowdy, Rowdy. Also worth your time is Woodson’s 2016 year in reading.
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Finnegans Punk
Forget One Direction. Meet the little known boy band made up of John Cage, James Joyce, and Joey Ramone. Cage composed a song based on Joyce’s Finnegans Wake called “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs,” which Ramone later sang to haunting effect.
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Artistic Solitude
“I used to run cross country in high school and it was like, I knew if I put in a certain kind of training, it was going to make me faster. If X, then Y. But with writing, it’s like, if X, if I do this thing that’s necessary, which is giving myself the space and time, then what? It’s sort of a question mark. You have no idea. You work so hard to offer yourself up to the space of the unknown.” Leslie Jamison (and Angela Flournoy and Katherine Towler) on being alone and setting aside the time to write.
Big Kindle On Sale
Normally $379, the Kindle DX, Amazon’s oversized version of the regular Kindle, is today going for $299 thanks to a one-day sale.