“No map can be a perfect representation of reality; every map is an interpretation, which may be why writers are so drawn to them,” Casey N. Cep writes about the fictional map at The New Yorker. Pair with: Our review of Where You Are.
Mapping the Territory
Nabokov’s Unpublished Letters
Nearly 300 previously unpublished love letters written by Vladimir Nabokov to his wife Vera Slonim from 1923 to 1975 will be published next year by Knopf.
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“The best house bourbon was Ten High”
Following up their publication of Charles Portis’s “Motel Life, Lower Reaches” online, the Oxford American brings us a speech in verse by Jay Jennings, the editor of a recent compilation of Portis’s work (which our own Bill Morris reviewed). Jennings delivered an ode to Portis to mark the author winning the Porter Prize Lifetime Achievement Award. Sample quote: “But you read the next book because the main character was from Little Rock,/and you knew no other book where the main character was from Little Rock/and you wanted to write a book about Little Rock.”
Twin Peaks literary criticism
With the end of the “Golden Age of TV,” let’s turn back to the show that started it all: Twin Peaks, “a revelation and inspiration for countless writers coming of age in the early 90s.” The new Twin Peaks Project begins with this nostalgic article in The Believer.
The Ball Is a Woman
“Now I get paid to do something I have loved since I was 4 years old. Other than my family, is there anything else I have loved so unconditionally, for so long?” Georgia Cloepfil in N+1 on the uncompromising, compromised life of the professional female athlete. See also: some thoughts about hosting the World Cup.
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A Blurb of One’s Own
Full Stop will be celebrating five years in January as an online literary journal. To commemorate the anniversary, they’re publishing their first-ever book, collecting the very best writing from their website and featuring blurbs by anyone who makes a donation to the magazine. Pair with this Millions piece on the art of blurb writing.
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