Most writers, unless they’re lucky enough to have an ideal place in which to work, make do with the best space available. For Colum McCann’s father, the shed in his backyard, which “always smelled damp inside, as if the rain rose up out of the carpet,” sufficed for the fiction he wrote after coming home from work. At Page-Turner, the National Book Award winner and Year in Reading alum remembers his father’s retreat.
Garrets Etc.
There’s Treasure Everywhere
In the mind of the ethical parent, one question overshadows all others: what’s the best way to get your kid to read Calvin and Hobbes? Unfortunately, there are no simple answers, only theories. (ICYMI: here’s a tribute to Calvin’s snow sculptures.)
Online translations of Murakami’s short fiction
For those who can’t wait for Haruki Murakami‘s new novel, Will over at Wednesday Afternoon Picnic will be translating flash fiction from Murakami’s collection of short stories Kumozaru.
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It’s the opposite of a happy ending fairy tale. It’s just hell.
Lauren Groff interviewed over at Full Stop about her novel Arcadia, which was a Millions Staff Pick in April.
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People were not invited–they went there.
The mansion that inspired The Great Gatsby‘s West Egg has been privately sold, after sitting on the market for two years.
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What About Your Head?
“None of us made love, we had only reproaches for one another. I hated that dependency and yet I couldn’t live without it.” This short piece by Mercè Rodoreda from the new issue of Harper’s Magazine is brutal and surprising. The piece is an excerpt from Rodoreda’s War, So Much War, out later this month.
Finnegans Punk
Forget One Direction. Meet the little known boy band made up of John Cage, James Joyce, and Joey Ramone. Cage composed a song based on Joyce’s Finnegans Wake called “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs,” which Ramone later sang to haunting effect.
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