If you’re struggling with your writing, turn to biographies of famous authors. This is Tom Perrotta’s cure for writer’s block. “It’s inspiring to read about a flawed human being who struggled with his or her demons and afflictions, experienced paralyzing episodes of failure or self-doubt, but somehow managed to do the work anyway, and produce something that enriched the world. That’s my version of self-help,” he said in a New York Times “By the Book” interview.
Shelf Help
Tuesday New Release Day: Sweeney; Simonson; Mahajan; Feldman; Barrett; Strong
Out this week: The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney; The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson; The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan; Terrible Virtue by Ellen Feldman; Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett; and Hold Still by Lynn Steger Strong. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Gone but Not Forgotten
"Their relative obscurity is what makes their fans so passionate — these are voices that never quite found the right audience when they were alive." Longreads has a reading list of forgotten women writers, including Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Anita Brookner, whom we profiled in our own pages last year.
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The Extreme Edge of Experience
Year in Reading alumna Sarah Manguso writes about motherhood, writing, and the disintegration of the self in a moving essay for Harper’s. As she puts it, "I want to read books that were written in desperation, by people who are disturbed and overtaxed, who balance on the extreme edge of experience. I want to read books by people who are acutely aware that death is coming and that abiding love is our last resort." Pair with Jaime Green’s Millions review of Manguso’s Ongoingness: The End of a Diary.
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Talking with Michelle Orange
At The Nervous Breakdown, Brad Listi sits down with Michelle Orange, who talks about writing ledes, Pauline Kael, and the story behind her new book, This is Running For Your Life. (For more, go check out her interview with our own Hannah Gersen.)
The Song of the Two Walts
Walter White is the new Walt Whitman. "Both are intellectual pioneers in their fields, their legacies—centuries apart—demanding risk, casting them outside of society, gliding out into the world, liberated from societal constraints," Kera Bolonik writes about Whitman's influence on Breaking Bad.
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The Art of Fielding: The Show
Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding may get its own HBO series, reports Variety. Additionally, if you subscribe to n+1, they'll include a copy of the book when it releases.
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Thanks But No
Rejection is something all writers face and no one's pretending it's pleasant, but worse than the rejection itself are the hours spent deciphering where a submission went wrong. Thankfully Lincoln Michel at Electric Literature was inspired by a 1920s rejection slip to create a self-explanatory "thanks but no thanks" note. While we're thankful these aren't the norm, we can definitely see the appeal...
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