Following the recent passing of Nobel laureate Doris Lessing, The New Statesman republished the author’s London diary, first published by the magazine back in 1958.
Empirical Studies of the Class System
Conquest of Panic
Irving Howe asks how Hemingway commanded the attention of a generation. Howe writes, "His great subject, I think, was panic." Our own Michael Bourne recently answered this question, recognizing Hemingway as a middlebrow revolutionary.
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East of Edam
What goes better together than wine and cheese? Authors and cheese. The Airship paired ten gourmet cheeses with famous writers. Virginia Woolf goes well with a Bayley Hazen Blue. "This Stilton-like blue is a mix of narratives – the Mrs. Dalloway of cheeses, if you will."
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The Best Web Publications Are Also The Youngest
Between the 40 Towns project organized by Jeff Sharlet’s Dartmouth students and the newly unveiled Vanishing Point project from Duncan Murrell’s students at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, it seems abundantly clear that college students are better at putting together web publications than 99% of established publishing outfits. Begin your tour with Christine Delp’s look at a blind man who makes his own martinis, and then check out other stories such as Ge Jin’s photographic essay on Chinese university students.
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Sunday Thoughts and Links
I really dug this write up of a visit by Edward P. Jones to a Seattle high school, where he talked to some kids about being a writer. I'm fascinated by Jones' persona. He's not a hermit, but neither is he a part of the more public contemporary literary crowd, all of whom seem to be associated with the same causes and who enjoy this sort of literary pseudo-fame while at the same time making a bit of a show about shying away from it. Of course I'm overgeneralizing here, but I'm sure you can think of some writers who might fit that description. I suppose my larger point is Jones seems to me to be a writer who, in an earlier time, would have only achieved fame late in his career or even posthumously, and I'm just really glad that he has gotten the acclaim that he deserves.I saw the movie Fever Pitch last night and enjoyed the way last year's baseball season was woven into the story so well. It also made me very curious to read Nick Hornby's novel by the same name, in which the protagonist is a rabid soccer fan. I'm not a big Hornby fan, but I'm very curious to see if they managed to swap out the sport at the center of the story while keeping the same overall feeling. Quite a feat if they managed to do a good job of it. One thing is clear though, trying to slap a movie tie-in cover on Hornby's book wouldn't have worked very well.Rodger Jacobs has set up a blog to track entries in his "Fitzgerald in Hollywood Short Fiction Contest."Chicagoist looks at books "with local ties." I've read All This Heavenly Glory and Gods in Alabama, but the third book The Week You Weren't Here by Charles Blackstone sounds interesting.
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E(volving)-Books from Black Balloon
Black Balloon created an “evolving e-book” iPad app for Louise Krug’s new memoir, Louise: Amended, and they’re giving it away for free! Plus, to sweeten the deal even further, emailing a request for the promo code will automatically enter you into a drawing for a $100 Powell’s gift card.
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