Colm Tóibín’s new book on Elizabeth Bishop is unusually hard to categorize. Part “primer,” part “personal reflection,” in Jonathan Farmer’s words, it moves back and forth between analysis and lyricism, alternating passages of beauty with nuts-and-bolts guides to Bishop’s poems. In Slate, Farmer tries to nail it down. You could also read our own Michael Bourne’s review of Tóibín’s The Master.
Jewel Boxes
Long-form Godfather
Ernest Hemingway, “the godfather of long-form” nonfiction? Richard Brody argues so in the New Yorker, citing Hemingway’s autobiographical, and wildly ambitious, The Green Hills of Africa.
You Will Survive
“You can only advocate for yourself when you know what it is you want from the experience. You’d be surprised by how many people go into this process and are unclear about what they hope to get out of it.” Over at the Amazon Author Insights blog, Katrin Schumann offers a checklist of seven tips to survive submitting your writing to editors, including this note about articulating your goals beforehand. (Ed. note: Amazon helps us pay the bills around here!)
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Identity Crisis
Recommended Reading: Our own Ismail Muhammad on a new book of essays by Durga Chew-Bose.
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Best Magazine Covers
Amazon invites you to vote for the best magazine covers of the year. (via Kottke)
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And the NMA Winners Are…
The good souls at Longform.org have organized all of this year’s National Magazine Award winners.
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A Stop-Motion Valentine
A little stop-motion film qua valentine that might appeal to V-day nonbelievers.
Bodies in Public
Édouard Louis discusses his third book, Who Killed My Father, as well as violence, poverty, and the gilets jaunes movement.
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