If you’ve ever heard that literary skill is synonymous with a good memory, you’ve likely bemoaned your own forgetfulness, especially when it comes to important things. Tim Parks felt the same way, until he read a new book on forgetting, which led him to wonder how much knowledge we can retain. In The New York Review of Books, he tackles the paradox of the reader’s memory. You could also read our own Mark O’Connell’s review of Parks’s book Italian Ways.
Say What?
The Poet’s Novel
Do poets make great novelists? Naja Marie Aidt, a phenomenal poet-novelist herself, picks her favorite novels by poets, featuring Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, and more.
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“A quiet hero of contemporary literature”
At The Paris Review, a remembrance of Evan S. Connell, whose work has been cited as an influence by Jonathan Franzen, Lydia Davis and Zadie Smith.
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“55 Thoughts” On The Air
Recommended listening: Our own Nick Ripatrazone talks with NHPR about his Millions essay, “55 Thoughts for English Teachers.”
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“Ultimately just plain nice”
Last week, I followed up the news that “because” may now be used as a preposition by noting that the American Dialect Society had named it their Word of the Year. Now, in The New Republic, John McWhorter argues that the new preposition is used to signal empathy and warmth. (Related: Fiona Maazel on the dangers of bad grammar.)
Major Shelf Envy
The Guardian has photos of A Little Life author Hanya Yanagihara‘s New York City apartment and its 12,000 – yes 12,000 – books. Pair with our interview with her from 2015: “It was the worst—the bleakest, the most physically exhausting, the most emotionally enervating—writing experience I’d had. I felt, and feared, that the book was controlling me, somehow, as if I’d somehow become possessed by it.”
Howard?
“Writing on a computer can be terribly distracting, so sometimes I like to use a pencil and paper to jot down ideas. I always end up drawing a cartoon duck. Inevitably, the duck is holding a notepad, and I can read the ideas that he wrote down.” At Clickhole, six writers explain how they overcome writer’s block.
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Colbert in the Rye
Recommended viewing: Tobias Wolff tried to convince Stephen Colbert that The Catcher in the Rye is J.D. Salinger’s best book. “Do we need to be reinforcing our kids’ bad behavior as teenagers with the idea they could be a character in a great novel? Dad, I wasn’t disobeying you, I was exploring modes of alienation,” Colbert joked.
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I’m an Alien
New from Stephen Fry: Stephen Fry in America: Fifty States and the Man Who Set Out to See Them All, a book recounting his travels in America while filming the BBC series of the same name–enlighteningly and entertainingly reviewed at The Washington Times. Includes the shocking revelation that Fry very nearly became an American!
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