Julia Fierro is a writer we’ve featured before, and her first novel Cutting Teeth was published last month. But as she explains in a new piece, there was a stretch of time when she didn’t write at all. “I was so cruel to myself, so impatient, beating myself up daily for not writing,” she says. “It took seven years worth of teaching… before I returned to writing with solid commitment. And when I did sit down in front of my computer, I was a better writer.”
Becoming a Better Writer by… Not Writing?
Printing Wikipedia
“Half utilitarian data visualization project, half absurdist poetic gesture:” a Brooklyn artist is working to turn all of Wikipedia into a print encyclopedia set numbering some 7,600 volumes. But the best part of the project by far is the titles for those volumes, which include such gems as “Hulk (Aqua Teen Hunger Force) — Humanitarianism in Africa.”
A Swan of Old
“After only a few lines of Mallarmé, you are engulfed in fine mist, and terror sets in.” Here’s a piece from The New Yorker on contending with the supreme enigma of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poetry.
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Remnick Interviewed
Robert Birnbaum has a terrific, funny, wide-ranging interview with David Remnick, a must read for all the New Yorker obsessives out there. (via Kottke)
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Order Some Donuts
Next week marks the release of Jordan Ferguson’s 33 1/3 book on Donuts, J Dilla’s legendary instrumental hip-hop album. Over at Stones Throw, you can dive into an excerpt. I recommend doing so while bumping “Last Donut of the Night” in the background.
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Show Me (Don’t Tell Me) State
Tired of the writerly hustle and bustle of New York City? Give Kansas City a try: “People stay here, or move here, because they have the cultural and financial freedom to try shit; if it doesn’t work, they try again.”
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Many Unusual Deaths
Wikipedia Find of the Week: List of unusual deaths. For example, “Draco, Athenian law-maker, was smothered to death by gifts of cloaks showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre on Aegina.”
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Wood and Krasznahorkai in Conversation
The latest installment of Housing Works Bookstore Café’s biweekly podcast features a conversation between James Wood and László Krasznahorkai. (We interviewed him for our site last year, too.) The Hungarian author’s next book, Seiobo There Below, was highlighted in our Great Second-Half 2013 Book Preview.
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