Why do some ideas only come to you when you’re under a tremendous amount of pressure? At the Ploughshares blog, S. Hope Mills reflects on the importance of deadlines, which may explain (according to Guardian columnist Robert Crum) why Dickens chose to serialize his novels.
With Time Running Out
Getting the Word Out
In his write up here of an important, but overlooked essay on copyright by Lewis Hyde, guest contributor Craig Fehrman noted that the Hyde essay had been downloaded only 746 times in nearly four years. Now, after the piece here about it, and subsequent linking by Boing Boing, the essay is the second most popular on the Social Science Research Network.
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Back to the Big Easy; Avoiding Bourbon Street
It’s two weeks past Mardi Gras, so you’re probably ready to revisit New Orleans by now. Good timing. Narrative.ly has a week’s worth of stories on the Big Easy, entitled “Beyond Bourbon Street.” (Related: I recommend reading Tulane’s Richard Campanella’s recent piece for Design Observer: “Hating Bourbon Street.”)
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The Escape of North Korea’s Poet Laureate
For years, Jang Jin Sung traveled within Kim Jong-il’s inner circle. As North Korea’s official poet laureate, he was tasked with “writing epic poems for [the] dictator … and overseeing inter-Korean espionage.” But in 2004, fearing a charge of treason, Sung fled the country, becoming one of the nation’s most high-profile defectors. Recently, Sung – who just published his memoir – spoke with Maclean’s about his life, his escape, and literature.
On the Mark
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“For the sake of having something to celebrate”
As part of their collaboration with the fiction editors at Five Chapters, the folks at Salon posted a story from A Guide to Being Born, the new collection by Millions contributor Ramona Ausubel.
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Talk of the Town
Michael Wolff’s palace intrigue book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump Whitehouse has dominated the news cycle this week. After receiving a cease-and-desist letter, publisher Henry Holt and Co. responded by pushing the publication date up four days. Currently #1 on Amazon’s Bestseller list, many independent booksellers say they have sold all their copies as well.
Crash Course
Koa Beck’s father gave her a copy of Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying when she was 15 years old. Depending on your persuasion, this was either a brilliant idea or an awful parental blunder. Regardless, Beck says the book (aided by The Bell Jar and Diary of a Mad Housewife) helped her understand that “the game was rigged, that everyone was lying, [and] that there was so much more to being a woman than what society said there was.”
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