“It is a privilege and a gift and an honor to be a debut author, but it is, above all things, an existential test.” Courtney Maum writes about the darker side of publishing a first book.
An Existential Test
What’s So Great?
“Diversity matters. Not only in what we look like, or what religion we practice, or in whom we love, but also in how we live our lives, including the order in which we go about things, the seasons in which we are able to create art.” Robin Black wonders “What’s So Great About Young Writers?” in a piece for the New York Times. Pair with our own series celebrating writers who got their start after 40.
Showtime Snags Rights to Clinton-Patterson Collaborative Novel
Former President Bill Clinton and best-selling powerhouse James Patterson‘s upcoming novel, The President is Missing, has been acquired as a Showtime television series, according to Vulture. There are few details about the series because the thriller won’t be released until June 2018. See also: our own Bill Morris on reading Patterson for the first time.
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Millenial Think-Piece Bingo
Millennial think-pieces can be a bit redundant. Next time you encounter an article, bring this bingo board with you. For refreshing writing on millennials, our own Kaulie Lewis reflects on Marina Keegan’s The Opposite of Loneliness.
Patty and Walter, anyone?
In The New York Times Magazine, Heather Havrilesky cautions against “The Divorce Delusion,” or one of modern drama’s most unrealistic tropes. “Infidelity, a love child (or two), dalliances with prostitutes, lewd online behavior; we’ve watched so many spouses bounce back from hell,” she writes, “that maybe we’re beginning to believe that there’s no trauma so great that it can’t be quickly metabolized into a courageous determination to sally forth against the storm.”
And The Problem With That Problem
The problem with memoir is well-known. What’s less well-known is the problem with the problem with memoir.