This year, the good folks at Slate and the Whiting Foundation kicked off a new literary prize, intended to reward authors for great second novels. To wrap up the year, they’ve asked several winners of the prize, including Akhil Sharma, Helen DeWitt and Daniel Alarcon, to write short pieces about objects that symbolize the writing process for their books. (Akhil Sharma chooses a stopwatch, while Eileen Myles chooses a can of Cafe Bustelo.)
Detritus
Effing up The New Yorker
Mary Norris on the cusswords permitted to run in The New Yorker over the years. Sadly, the piece is not titled "Fuck This Shit."
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Borrowing: It Runs in the Family
Hey, old timers, quit blaming my generation for "irresponsible" borrowing. It turns out folks older than forty own the same amount of student loan debt as folks younger than 30, and you guys have had at least a ten year head start in the workforce.
….and the joke may just be on you.
Aaron Wiener for Slate on attending a 24-hour long play in Berlin based on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. And we thought three to four hours of DFW was a marathon.
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As the Cock Crows
It's that time of year again – our good friends at The Morning News are back with their annual epic, the Tournament of Books! Head over to TMN now to read round 1, which pits award season favorite Lincoln in the Bardo against Samantha Schweblin's Fever Dream (and read our own review of George Saunders's much-lauded novel here).
Between Life and Death
Over at the Public Domain Review, Sharon Ruston examines the scientific background to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, from resuscitation to galvanism.
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