Blackout, the recent memoir by Sarah Hepola, chronicles the author’s long struggle with reckless drinking. The title references the total loss of memory she experienced after some of her worst benders. At The Morning News, Rosecrans Baldwin talks with Hepola about her book, amnesia and the nature of memory.
What Happened
Secrets of the Game
Following the successes of Moneyball and The Art of Fielding, young writers with an eye on their book sales are growing more interested in writing baseball books. Fortunately for them, Luke Epplin wrote a guide.
The Detroit Comeback
Writing for Popular Mechanics, our own Bill Morris “envisions the bright future of the great American city” he once called home: Detroit.
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You Can’t Go Home Again
"When I go back to Bogotá, I like to share my knowledge of the car bombs that went off in the city in the ’80s and ’90s. I helpfully point out the gory details to cab drivers and friends. I press my finger on the window and point at corners, 'That’s the spot where an ATM blew up, seven dead.'” From Bogatá to Tel Aviv -- here are ten writers on the places they immigrated from, returned to, remember, and call home.
A dimension of mind
There are two essays on the narrative genius behind The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling, over at Berfrois: Michael A. Moodian on how using genre tropes allowed Serling to tell politically volatile stories during the McArthy era of Hollywood, and Christopher Cappelluti takes a look at how The Twilight Zone changed television history.
“The serious critic ultimately loves his subject more than he loves his reader”
Though everyone is tired of the online critics are too nice/ do critics even matter debate cropping up everywhere as of late, Daniel Mendelsohn's "Critic's Manifesto" may be the best thing to come out of the conversation yet: a clear formulation of what it means to be a critic and why that matters.
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The Orchid Read
"Writing gives me great feelings of pleasure. There’s a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to. It’s like trying to write a song, making tiny tweaks, reading it out loud, shifting things to make it sound a certain way. It’s very physical. I get antsy. I jiggle my feet a lot, get up a lot, tap my fingers on the keyboard, check my e-mail. Sometimes it feels like digging out of a hole, but sometimes it feels like flying. When it’s working and the rhythm’s there, it does feel like magic to me." Susan Orlean on why she writes.
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In Defense of Distraction
“Utter devotion to the principle that distraction is Satan and writing is paramount can be just as poisonous as an excess of diversion,” writes Benjamin Nugent.
The Nobel Will Return in 2019
"These elements of scandal, by now familiar in the #MeToo era, claimed an unusual casualty on Friday: The Nobel Prize in Literature, the world’s most prestigious accolade for writing." In the wake of a sex abuse scandal, The Swedish Academy announced it will postpone this year's award until next year when they will name two winners. In the meantime, maybe we should all mull over the problem with prestigious prizes.