A while back, I linked to a contentious letter between Saul Bellow and Jack Ludwig, written not long after Bellow found out Ludwig was sleeping with his wife. Now, here’s a (somewhat) less angry piece of correspondence, sent from Philip Larkin to Barbara Pym. Sample quote: “Has anyone ever done any work on why memories are always unhappy?”
“Depressing day”
Finding the Words
At Louisiana Channel, Colm Tóibín discusses finding the perfect sentence to start your book. In honor of the Oscars, Bill Morris wrote about the adapted screenplay for Tóibín’s Brooklyn.
●
●
Red Dawn
Apropos of nothing, here are some books to read when your country is invaded by Russians.
●
●
Kids These Days
“The complexity of texts students are being assigned to read has declined by about three grade levels over the past 100 years,” says Eric Stickney, the educational research director for Renaissance Learning.
Me and Myself
What is the personal essay, and where could it go from here? In The Boston Review, Merve Emre traces two paths.
●
●
tl;dr
It’s the last day to vote on panels at SXSW interactive 2013. So if you wanna hear how our editor in chief, C. Max Magee, and our friends Andrew Womack, from The Morning News, and Kevin Nguyen, from The Bygone Bureau, have changed the game with independent long form digital publishing, you better cast your vote today.