“An ideal essay is hard to define, but easy to point to. An ideal essay mines the “I” in efforts of high exposition. It is driven by a need to testify or witness, and demands the same of its reader. It is a glimpse of something uncomfortably recognizable, a requiem for the quotidian, a look over the newly-gilded edge.” Samantha Tucker Iacovetto writes about “Defining the Ideal Essay” for Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog
The Ideal Essay
Gentleman Seeking a Lady in Glasses
Are you a guy with good taste in frames and fiction? Then come to the next I Like Your Glasses: Literary Speed Dating. CoverSpy and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe will be hosting the event on February 12 at the store. Tickets are $15 (including a free drink), but gents can get their tickets for $12 if they use the promotional code “QUEEQUEG.” To see what you’re in for, read our essay on attending the first I Like Your Glasses.
Olga Slavnikova on Reading Roulette
The Morning News continues its ongoing Reading Roulette series by sharing “A Light Head” by Olga Slavnikova. While the author is a contender for the 2013 Russian Booker Prize, TMN correspondent Elizabeth Kiem doesn’t need to wait to award “best line” to this little ditty: “The Russian dilemma posed by Dostoyevsky—‘Shall I let the world go to hell or skip my tea?’—has been resolved in favor of the tea.”
It’s Not TV. It’s F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Deadline reports that Hunger Games screenwriter Billy Ray has plans to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, into a series for HBO.
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Some People Are Noble
“The terrible thing is that the reality behind these words depends ultimately on what the human being (meaning every single one of us) believes to be real. The terrible thing is that the reality behind all these words depends on choices one has got to make, for ever and ever and ever, every day.” James Baldwin on the artist’s struggle for “integrity.” Here’s a bonus piece from The Millions on Baldwin, race, and fatherhood.
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Emily Gould’s Favorite Memoirs
Emily Gould, author of the new memoir And the Heart Says Whatever, lists the best memoirs ever at the Daily Beast: “A few themes run throughout: druggy, decadent bohemia, forbidden or strange sex, art, and power, and, um, cooking.”
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