Writing Desire
Stop Reading this Post Right Now
Get off the internet and read a book. Research has shown that deep reading (slow, immersive reading) is like an exercise for our brains that can enable us to be more empathetic.
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Twain and Keller
Recommended Reading: An excerpt from The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 in which the author has dinner with Helen Keller.
Steal This Curiosity
“At first, I didn’t realize that AlexanderIII was translating the book; I thought he was just a fastidious Russian reader with a loose command of the English language. It was fun to see people debating the meanings of my thoroughly worked-over phrases…Then I remembered that no Russian publisher had acquired the rights, and realized that AlexanderIII must be translating it for some kind of book-pirating outfit.” Over at The Atlantic, Peter Mountford recounts the experience of watching book piracy in action.
Multi-Talented Nick Cave
You have to be a little in awe of the multi-disciplinary artist. Musician Nick Cave, who made his screenwriting debut with The Proposition, talks to the New Yorkerabout his new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, as well as the multi-media audio book version.
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Twitter’s Poetics, Twitter’s Bots
As Teju Cole demonstrated with his real-time ghazals (one, two, and three) this past week, Twitter is a medium ripe for linguistic experimentation. And far from being the exclusive domain of human beings, the social network can also produce “found poetry” at the behest of computer programs – a practice I recently wrote about for The Bygone Bureau. But who’s behind these Twitter bots? Over at The Boston Globe, they check in with Darius Kazemi, the 30-year-old programmer who’s made some of the most-loved accounts out there.