If you haven’t fantasized about being a solitary lighthouse keeper, then you’ve either a) read some of the scariest bits from Susan Casey’s The Devil’s Teeth; or b) you haven’t yet watched Aeon Magazine‘s gorgeous Behind The Light short film.
I Am My Lighthouse’s Keeper
Tuesday New Release Day
Milan Kundera's new collection of essays, Encounter, is now out. And for those still trying to figure out Inception, the shooting script has been published.
●
●
Epic Fail
When did Samuel Beckett's "fail better" become the motto of Silicon Valley? At Slate, our own Mark O'Connell traces the history of the phrase. "Fail Better, with its TEDishly counterintuitive feel, is the literary takeaway par excellence; it’s usefully suggestive, too, of the corporate propaganda of productivity, with its appeals to 'think different' or 'work smarter' or 'just do it.'"
●
●
PEN World Voices Begins
Attention New Yorkers: The 2010 PEN World Voices Festival kicks off today with Claire Messud, Lorraine Adams, and Norman Rush. Update: Audio of this stimulating discussion of diversity in literature is available at WNYC. And it looks like many World Voices events will be streaming live at the PEN Website, accessible whether you hang your hat in New York or Nome (or Wasilla). Tonight catch Patti Smith, Rodrigo Frésan, and Salman Rushdie.
●
●
Witches of Walgreens
In the spirit of Alex Mar's Witches of America and Stacy Schiff's The Witches: Salem, 1692, here's a piece from Atlas Obscura on pinpointing the exact site of the Salem witch trials. Spoiler alert: it overlooks a Walgreens parking lot.
Jumping Ship
How do you explain the recent “shit storm” at Granta? Let Full-Stop EIC Alex Shephard do it for you.