Do people enjoy writers like Pynchon and Nabokov in part because they’re so odd? A new paper suggests that we tend to like art when we believe its creator is eccentric. The Atlantic reads through a study that’s a bit of a strange one.
A Few Chapters Short of a Novel
Oh Doctor
Recommended Reading: Frances Stonor Saunders on Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago.
In Defense of Distraction
“Utter devotion to the principle that distraction is Satan and writing is paramount can be just as poisonous as an excess of diversion,” writes Benjamin Nugent.
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A Culture of Optimism
Reflecting on the sales figures of Lean In and How to Win Friends and Influence People, Sarah L. Corteau wonders: could it be that self-help is America’s quintessential genre? (You could also read Alan Levinowitz on the paradox of Christian self-help books.)
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Kino
Haruki Murakami, our favorite advice columnist, has a new piece of short fiction in the New Yorker.
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