“The art style also changes from chapter to chapter — some panels fill the pages to the edges and are overwhelming in their dark palette; some seem ordinary in proportion, confident; others fill the space around small figures with words, words, words; and others still have a minimalist, sketch-like quality and barely occupy the page at all — and they aren’t always chapters, or even stories, in the traditional sense.” On MariNaomi’s Dragon’s Breath and Other Stories.
“Deceptively spare”
Of Rainfall and Fluffy Bathrobes
You’ve probably heard the internet adage, “If it exists, there is a porn of it.” Never has that been truer than in the case of the political erotica of 2016. From a particularly colorful Cruz/Rubio series: “’Who is this Hillary you’ve been texting?’ Rubio asks Cruz. ‘Saying things like ‘meet me when Marco’s not home,’ ‘I can hook you up,’ ‘what’s the price’ … don’t act all naïve right now!'”
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Lowbrow
“I have a theory: the thing that makes you a unique writer hasn’t got so much to do with your influences as it does with how you became a writer in the first place. I think your preferences—your obsessions—come just as much from the first sorts of things you consumed and were passionate about. Whether that’s pop music, comics, “lowbrow” fiction, soap operas, or anything else, the thing that matters most is what started you writing stories.” Amber Sparks writes about “lowbrow” influences and the many paths to becoming a storyteller in an essay for Electric Literature.
Poetry of Surveillence
“Nuclear Chelsea Air Marshal infrastructure Ionosphere Burst.” You can thank the NSA for this haiku. The NSA Haiku Generator is a website that takes commonly flagged terms and turns them into poetry. Have fun messing up the NSA’s algorithms for a day.
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Deep, Hungry Gulps
“My idea of the ideal literary dinner party remains locking a book under my left wrist while conveying risotto to my mouth with my right at the kitchen table.” Stacy Schiff talks literary dinner parties and more in this week’s New York Times By the Book column. Schiff’s latest, The Witches: Salem, 1692, is out this week.
Distraction-Free Writing Platforms
A new distraction-free writing platform has emerged. Can QuietWrite unseat WriteRoom as the best tool for internet-enabled authors?
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Outsourcing Tech Manufacture and the Cost of the Kindle
According to Steve Denning at Forbes, “the U.S. has lost or is on the verge of losing its ability to develop and manufacture a slew of high-tech products.” He says the U.S. will never be able to manufacture a Kindle on its own soil. But if the environmental cost of producing just one e-reader, as VQR‘s Ted Genoways says, is “roughly the same as fifty books,” why would anyone want to?
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