Remember that story you were going to write about your neighbor’s dog but never did? When you’re a writer, you have to know when to ditch both the bad and good ideas. At The Atlantic, Bob Brody laments all the stories he’ll never write and concludes: “It’s taken me a long time to learn this—that sometimes the best course of action is inaction.”
Lost Ideas
The Bechdel Test Through History
Sometime Millions contributor Frank Kovarik takes a look at Alison Bechdel’s famous test for gender bias in movies and applies it to literary classics going back to Homer.
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In Praise of the Booker
In light of Howard Jacobson’s victory for The Finkler Question, Laura Miller at Salon explains why the Man Booker Prize is the best of the literary awards.
Words of the Year Watch, Con’t
Two more words of the year as 2016 comes to a close: Merriam-Webster has chosen “surreal” while The Guardian, in an act of timeliness, nominates “unpresidented.”
Every House ‘Round Here a Poe House
In a turn of events that are probably not good for Baltimore’s reputation for decay, the Edgar Allen Poe House might close due to lack of funds. The Times had the details when news of the troubles first broke; at The Paris Review, you can find more links and laments.
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Michael Chabon, Punk
Before he was Michael Chabon the novelist he was Michael Chabon the punk musician. Now recordings of his work with The Bats are available online as part of Mind Cure Records archival series.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Crytozoologist
Martin Connelly takes a look at The International Cryptozoology Museum, which is run by Loren Coleman up in Portland, Maine. If you can’t make the pilgrimage yourself (or if you’re just put off by chupacabra taxidermy), you can also get a feel for the study of far out beasts by reading Coleman’s “genre-defining” book, Cryptozoology A to Z.
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Contemporary Fiction and the Internet
“The internet has altered our lives in ways television never did or could, but mainstream literary novelists – by which I mean writers who specialize in realistic, character-based narratives – have mostly shied away from writing about this, perhaps hoping that, like TV, it could be safely ignored.” Laura Miller examines how contemporary novels are coming to terms with the internet.
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Think of the Children
When did the air of scandal surrounding Philip Roth give way to a kind of reverence? At a certain point, Roth lost his reputation for controversy. In The New Republic, Adam Kirsch investigates the odd story of Roth’s career, including evidence from Claudia Roth Pierpoint’s new book about the author, Roth Unbound (which we reviewed).