Sometimes good writers write very badly. As evidence, Literary Hub has collected samples of bad writing from the likes of Year in Reading alum Isaac Fitzgerald and Daniel Clowes, who we interviewed here.
Bad from Good
You Know the Story
“Storytelling is an indispensable human preoccupation, as important to us all—almost—as breathing. From the mythical campfire tale to its explosion in the post-television age, it dominates our lives. It behooves us then to try and understand it.” On the inherent sameness of stories with John Yorke from The Atlantic.
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“Comfort savagery”
“Others may prefer to will themselves into James Bond’s dinner jacket and Aston Martin DB4, but I’d rather slip into a !Kung hunter’s penis sheath and heft his hunting spear.” At The Guardian, Will Self explores his odd preference for deeply uncomfortable comfort reading.
“My awareness and relationship with covers began nearly a decade ago.”
Craig Mod’s superb take on book cover design in the digital age, “Hack the Cover,” is really worth the read.
How the Fulbright Started
“Whatever the [Fulbright] program became,” writes Boston Globe correspondent Sam Lebovic, “it was first conceived as a budget-priced megaphone to transmit American ideas to the world, rather than as a genuine international dialogue.” Indeed, one 1940s newspaper columnist dubbed the program “an ingenious piece of higher mathematics…[that] found a way to finance out of the sale of war junk a worldwide system of American scholarships.”
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OED Overload
If you’re eagerly anticipating the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, be prepared to wait until 2034. You can blame the internet for the delay, which has made research easier but also leads to information overload. There are so many new words that the dictionary would be 40 volumes if it ever makes it to print, but expect it to be only online instead. For more on the new OED, read a profile of new editor Michael Proffitt.
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A Bolaño Gallery Show
“Rockslide Sky,” an exhibition of art inspired by Roberto Bolaño‘s story “Gomez Palacio,” has just completed its run at Fordham University’s Center Gallery/Lipani Gallery…but a slideshow lives on in cyberspace. (I like feel this one would have made a nice cover for Last Evenings on Earth, but Bolañophiles may want to click through all 18.)