Recommended Reading: Rachael Maddux’s “Hail Dayton,” which features one of the finest opening paragraphs ever printed.
“The town was called Dayton.”
Introducing/A New Feature
Good news, Twitter poets! The Goddess of 140 Characters decided to let us tweet line breaks. (h/t Slate)
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Falling in Love with Language
“When I heard Afro-Brazilian people speak Portuguese, first in films like City of God and Bus 174, and then live and direct in Bahia, I fell hard for the ease, lyricism, and lilt in their voices which reminded me of the Anglophone Caribbean family and community I grew up in.” Over at Words Without Borders, Naomi Jackson reflects on blackness in Brazil.
The Paper Trail
What writers are actually earning money? Over at Electric Literature, Lincoln Michel takes a look at the new Author Earnings report, which scours Amazon bestseller lists and extrapolates the data to make claims about the state of publishing and self-publishing. Here’s an older Millions piece by Edan Lepucki on self-publishing as supplemental and influential to the traditional route.
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Snopes to the Rescue!
The New York Times profiles our best tool in combating asinine email forwards: snopes.com. Use it liberally against all who forward you nonsense masquerading as “news.”
Shakespeare in Asia
“It’s fair to say Shakespeare is having a cultural moment in Asia, with a “boom” of new film adaptations and dramatic stagings,” and the Royal Shakespeare Company just received 1.5 million pounds to keep that boom going by translating all of the Bard’s plays into Mandarin. Melville House has the full story, and it pairs well with both this diagram of a translated book’s usual lifespan and this discussion of Shakespeare’s best plays.
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@NickMoran
Wow. I agree. I also loved “besot by hyper-conservative goofery.”
I just forwarded “Hail Dayton” to a student I’m coaching, who fears she is irredeemably lackluster as a writer. I disagree. I think she has been beaten down by an idiot of a boss who “doesn’t like” her writing but can give her absolutely no specifics as to why. What I would like would be to stride into her office and smite him.
My student’s assignment is to let the words of “Hail Dayton” wash over her.
I am very excited about discovering Rachel Maddux. What a one-of-a-kind voice she [email protected]
Moe Murph
Least Favorite Comment: “There’s something wrong with it but I don’t know what it is.”
@Moe Murph, agreed! Hope you get to smite and soon!