“Russian humor is to ordinary humor what backwoods fundamentalist poisonous snake handling is to a petting zoo. Russian humor is slapstick, only you actually die.” Ian Frazier writes about the strange humor of Daniil Kharms for the New York Review of Books.
Russian Slapstick
The Unwritten Novel
Recently, we featured five writers' reminisces about the novels they ultimately shelved. Here a sixth, Elmo Keep, explains what led her to throw away her first novel, quite outside considerations of craft:"I could not resolve the conflict of a story that was not mine."
A Response to the Death of Writing
"Why, after all, do writers write? What is the impulse, the insistence on story, on seeing and representing the world? It has little to do with technology although everything to do with narrative, which is a purpose that, on the surface, technology also seems to share. The difference is that the writer creates narrative with intention, whereas technology merely gathers, or processes, information, leaving interpretation, analysis, up to us." Let's just say David L. Ulin doesn't think Joyce would work for Google.
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Pictures of You(th)
The good people over at The Rumpus have added another fantastic essay to their Albums of Our Lives series. This week, it’s Jonathan Kime who gives The Cure’s crushing, overwhelmingly melancholic 1989 album Disintegration the track-by-track treatment. Earlier iterations included Sufjan Stevens and Jason Isbell.
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The Last Samurai
Recommended Reading: On Helen DeWitt's novel The Last Samurai and how it cultivates ambition in its readers.
One hundred tons of wisdom and learning
Ryeberg, an online magazine of writers curating YouTube videos, has a handy guide to creating an ebook in 8 easy steps. Step number 2: "Transform the information from the tape into static cosmic energy."
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The Drama of Rejection
We've all been rejected; after all, we're writers. Yet sometimes it's nice to know someone has it worse than you. With that in mind, New Hampshire Public Radio presents dramatic readings of famous rejection letters. Pair with: Our ask a writing teacher on rejection from various literary journals.
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