Holy Verse
Not Another Trauma Memoir
What I didn’t want was for my book to become a trauma narrative or a healing narrative that would be touted as merely a testament to love. It’s not meant to be only an uplifting and inspirational piece of literature. I’m tired of the type of memoir that just shows you its scars and wants you to feel sympathy for it. This is not that kind of memoir.” Garrard Conley interviewed over at Electric Literature in conjunction with the release of his new memoir, Boy Erased.
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The First Book Flown to the Moon
Alyssa Lukpat on the tiny book Buzz Aldrin took with him on the history-making voyage to the moon.
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A Literary Conspiracy
Gaddis, Pynchon, “Wanda Tinasky”: Jenny Hendrix looks at a real-life literary conspiracy of mistaken identity upon the re-release of “Jack Green’s” Fire the Bastards.
Hard Time
One of the more common questions that comes up in The Nervous Breakdown’s self-interviews is what the subjects consider to be the hardest part of the writing life. The most recent edition sees Jac Jemc, whose latest came out last week, admit that time is what foils her: “Everything takes longer than I think it will, more drafts than I think it will.” This might be a good time to look back on some earlier examples of the form.
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Slow Down
“And journalists, the ones who do it for a living, will continue to have their faith in the profession shaken, as they panic and let their own standards slip in order not to be embarrassed by Reddit at 2:43 in the morning. But unlike high-frequency traders, Internet entrepreneurs, and online vigilantes, journalists have a stake in those standards, which are the only reason for having professionals do the job.” Fast news, Twitter, and journalism in the digital age.
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Uber Nichts
George Bernard Shaw had a strange relationship with Nietzsche. Alternately envious and dismissive of the German philosopher, Shaw once said he wanted to be an intellectual in Nietzsche’s mold, though he also felt Nietzsche’s thinking was addled and self-absorbed. In an essay for The New Statesman, Michael Holroyd tries to make sense of Shaw’s views.
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What the Bestseller List Says about 2017
Slate books and culture columnist Laura Miller looks at what this year’s bestseller list tells us about 2017. One of her conclusions, “2017 was the year that the very concept of a best-seller became even more dubious.” After reading her analysis, check out our Year in Reading lists, whose authors found joy in reading and viewed it as one of the few good things of this year, even if the bestsellers of the year didn’t reflect those feelings.
Unbreakable
Recommended reading: Wil S. Hylton profiles Laura Hillenbrand and the effects of chronic fatigue syndrome on her writing in a piece for The New York Times Magazine, just in time for the release of the film adaptation of Unbroken.
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Can we please have a moratorium on Westerners using the terms “Jihadi”/”Jihad”/”Jihadists”? It principally refers to an inner spiritual struggle, not acts of terrorism.