Jeff Bezos married a novelist, “expressed a passionate devotion to books”, and may be the one person mild-mannered indie bookshop owners hate more than any other. How’d that happen? After perusing a short history from the New York Review of Books, see for yourself with our vintage news announcements on Amazon’s innovations in pay-per-page pricing, now-old products like the Kindle, and its industry-changing acquisitions of The Washington Post and the English language.
Citizen Bezos
“The Specter of the Confessional”
“The specter of the confessional haunts all first-person writing, and women’s writing in particular,” but perhaps “the instinct to insert [the self] comes from a place of saying, ‘I’m not an expert, I’m just a person; let me show you where I’m situated here in this thing I’m telling you about.'” Our own Lydia Kiesling writes about Meghan Daum, Lena Dunham, Leslie Jamison and the confessional impulse in nonfiction for Salon.
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Last Call for MPWs
Last November, the University of Southern California announced that it would stop offering a Masters in Professional Writing, ending a program that counts Richard Yates and Hubert Selby, Jr. among its faculty alumni. At The Nervous Breakdown, Aram Saroyan (son of William) looks back on his time as an instructor.
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Lies and Hoaxes and Fake News, Oh My!
“Hoaxers make it seem like things are as bad as we fear they are, and they often, especially now, play on our fears rather than our wishes.” The Rumpus interviewed New Yorker Poetry Editor Kevin Young about the inspiration behind his new book, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. Pair with Young’s Year in Reading entry and our review of Bunk.
Baby Belle
Precocious hardly begins to describe the early work of now-famous child fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson. If you’re like me–a clueless/skeptical johnny-come-lately–check out this post, in which Tavi documents and explains the Blanche DuBois outfit she’s worn to school and her take on Tennessee Williams‘ most famous heroine.
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Ben Marcus’ Other People Pod
Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet (reviewed by us last month), does an Other People Podcast with Brad Listi.
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Neil Gaiman Nachos
Neil Gaiman’s writing gets compared to “a great bowl of nachos” in Nikki Steele’s food-focused review of The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Pair with: our own Nick Moran on how his favorite books influence his appetite.