Remember that time Amtrak offered a 10-day train residency, and the internet experienced a collective freakout because trains are literary catnip, and then we found out it was kind of a scam? Barnard Zine Library does, too. In honor of that cultural moment, they recently sponsored an “MTA Residency” that, while less glamorous, has already yielded beautiful work.
The aMTrAk Residency
Near Deaths in Literature
Last week, JK Rowling announced that, midway through writing the Harry Potter series, she nearly killed off Ron Weasley "out of spite." Ron isn't the first supporting character to narrowly avoid death in an author's rough draft. The Awl illustrates some of literature's other close calls with death.
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Winning Women
Eleanor Catton has been getting a lot of press for being the youngest author ever to win the Man Booker prize, but she claims that the new fame is a mixed blessing that often brings up sexism. "In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are – about luck and identity and how the idea struck them," she told The Guardian.
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Feather-Light Chime
In the spirit of yesterday's noise/silence-conscious Curiosity, here's a piece from Granta Magazine that offers us a sneak peek at Helen Oyeyemi's writing playlist. Spoiler alert: Led Zeppelin didn't make the cut.
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Rick Moody, Life Coach
"This seems to me the much more complex human truth … that for every theorist of the physical, as with every brainless brawler out in front of a tavern, there is a spot in him in which he aspires to the spirit. Always the flickering of the spiritual in which we reach for better. This is the ambition that changes those who aspire to it.” Here is the latest installment in The Literary Hub’s brave, groundbreaking series “Rick Moody: Life Coach." This week finds Moody urging his reader along a path of nonviolence. Last time he took on crying.
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New Releases: Crichton, Jin, Bolaño
This week brings the release of Michael Crichton's posthumously published tale of the high seas, Pirate Latitudes and A Good Fall, a new collection of stories by Ha Jin. Also out recently is Melville House's Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview.
NYRB in the NYPL
Exciting news — the New York Public Library has acquired the archives of The New York Review of Books. You could also check out Sam Allingham’s piece about his experience working in a library.
Nit-Pick
Why does the new Liam Neeson film use a hyphen in its title? According to AP Style, “nonstop” is one word, yet the film is marketed stateside with a hyphen stuck in the middle. At Slate, L.V. Anderson looks into a typographic mystery.
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