Following the news that Beyoncé sampled a TED talk given by Year in Reading contributor Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Tin House dug up an interview with the author, who says that to this day, when she looks at the manuscript of Americanah, she feels “thrilled and amazed that [she] actually finished writing this.”
“Abroad, you could be anything”
“Will you accept these abs?”
A new season of The Bachelorette is upon us, and we all know what that means: a whole new batch of Leigh Stein’s Bachelorette poems!
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Hemingway Double Shot
Got a couple thousand bucks lying around? You can place a bid on one of Ernest Hemingway’s love letters. Or, for a more modest price of "free," you can read Tim Weed's rumination entitled "Chasing Hemingway’s Ghost in Havana."
Poetic Bubbles
“‘I want to meet POETS,’ I typed. Beneath my earnest headline, I described how I yearned for a workshop buddy who wrote contemporary verse, someone who wasn’t afraid to give and accept feedback. I also asked for a sample poem, just to weed out the people I didn’t jive with stylistically.” On forging friendships with poets from Denise K. James at The Rumpus.
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The Boss’s Papers
Bruce Springsteen's archive is headed to Monmouth University, which is located in his hometown: Long Branch, New Jersey.
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“I noticed a few stains”
“This is minor, but I noticed a few typos. For instance, at various points on pages 144 through 148 and also on page 202, you wrote, ‘All wokr and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ And on page 308, it’s ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull Jack.’ If that one’s intentional, it provides a nice break from the preceding 307 pages, and the levity is a nice contrast to the monotony.” Notes on a Jack Torrance manuscript.
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Proto-Stalin
The world isn’t exactly wanting for character studies of Captain Ahab, but Chris Power manages to come up with a novel analysis of the character in this essay about the Moby-Dick antagonist. In Power’s telling, Ahab was valuable in part for what he told us about the 20th century -- namely, he foreshadowed the dictators and despots to come. You could also read Hester Blum’s contribution to this essay about the best American novels.
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