“Since I often biked to my therapist’s, he took note of my helmet and asked how my new exercise regimen was going. It’s going great! I said. I love it! I wish I’d known earlier that I ought to bike. Now I hated going underground. It was like the death instinct to go underground, into the subway. I never realized I hated it so utterly until I didn’t have to do it anymore.” On riding a bike in New York.
“Then suddenly, a bicycle”
Poetry Anonymous
There are a lot of reasons to start writing poetry, but McSweeney’s gives you a list on when to put the pen down. “You were witty that one time while drinking wine at book club” is not an excuse.
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It’s Not the Spectacles and Pageantry…
Dan Brown gets D.C. wrong, says Slate. (But isn’t this just another way of saying that it belongs with almost every other narrative, literary or televisual, ever concocted about the Diamond District?)
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Curated Book Lists
New York City’s iconic Strand bookstore features prominent authors’ curated book collections on their website. Here’s Jennifer Egan‘s. Here’s Art Spiegelman‘s.
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Unpredictable Lit
“These people may not take you seriously. And your boss might not either. Or your dentist or your best friend from middle school. But you who does take you seriously? Dictators. Dictators take you very seriously. Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Augusto Pinochet, all rounded up writers and artists in short order. They could not afford to have the unpredictability of literature at large while they were trying to create a totalitarian state.” Wendy Willis on subversion through writing for The Rumpus.
Jane Austen Goes Electric
Helen Lewis looks at how recent film and TV adaptations of Jane Austen books serve surprising, acerbic takes on the author's well-known works.
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