We’ve all had that annoying moment of finding the perfect word to win Scrabble with, except that word doesn’t count. Now, Scrabble is letting players nominate a new word to enter its dictionary. You can submit on Facebook. Just do us a favor, and nominate something better than “hashtag” or “selfie.”
Scrabble Shake-up
No Lie
“One lie I tell is that we care, generally—human beings—about each other. We could not, I tell myself in the moments just before the night’s dark hour, create The Odyssey or King Lear or Thomas and Beulah without a profound sense of The Other. Surely, were it true this thing’s a joke, nothing more, and a cruel one at that, we’d have no Dickinson, no Yeats, no freakin’ Rumi, read by Bly, loud on an old tape deck while I shower.” Pablo Tanguay on the art of lying.
A Poetry Reading Workshop
“Poets ought to learn how to present work as well as produce it,” says Joe Weil, who shares some invaluable Tips for Doing a Poetry Reading. (Bonus: our own Janet Potter offers a tutorial on the appropriate way to introduce an author [or poet] before their reading.)
Kathleen Alcott on the Writing Life
At the Rumpus, Kathleen Alcott provides a poignant recollection of what she inherited as a writer from her father: “And is it worth it? Was it for my father, is it for me, for nearly every writer I’ve met, whose default answer is ‘Yes’?”
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Thomas Pynchon: The Comic Strip
Galley Cat highlights a 2003 comic strip, “Thomas Pynchon, Man of Mystery,” that is unfortunately yet to go into syndication.
The Old-New Journalism
“The repetitions, the ellipses, the onomatopoeia: All the markers of Wolfe’s stylistic DNA were adaptive mutations to a competitive climate, search-engine optimization for the typewriter age.” Here’s an interview with Tom Wolfe about his new novel, Back to Blood, which is receiving mixed reviews.
Reading E-Readers
The publishing industry is changing quickly, and Jellybooks is helping it happen. The company gives out free e-books to readers in exchange for their consent to track their reading habits. This data goes back to publishers to be used in the market. Our own Nick Moran asks if e-readers are as green as we think.