“What I want to know is, since when does making art require participation in any community, beyond the intense participation that the art itself is undertaking? Since when am I not contributing to the community if all I want to do is make the art itself?” Meghan Tifft gives voice to the struggle of the introverted writer in an essay for The Atlantic.
A Community of Introverts
The legends and the largely forgotten
The National Book Foundation has an online exhibit of the runners up for the award since its inception in 1950. That’s a lot of titles, so you might like to let John Williams be your guide.
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Whatever I choose is cool because I am cool.
The Rumpus has an interview up with Ann Friedman, executive editor at GOOD, and curator of the beloved tumblogs Lady Journos and #realtalk From Your Editor.
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The Naked Truth About Favorite Poems
Reddit users asked one another to name their all-time favorite poems. Not to be outdone, Poetry Brain asked its Twitter followers to name their all-time favorite poems… to read naked. Since I imagine the latter group is usually only able to read in the buff while at home, I bet they really lament the 2001 demise of Harvard’s “Phone-a-Poem” feature.
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How Should An Advice Columnist Be
“What matters is you, all alone at your desk at five in the morning.” We’ve come a long way from Dear Abby and Ann Landers, says Megan Marz in an essay for The Point, in which she looks at a younger generation of columnists that includes Cheryl Strayed, Heather Havrilesky, and Kristen Dombek. And speaking of advice! Have you checked out our new writing-advice counselors Swarm and Spark? No? Well then hie yourself to their column already!
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And So It Goes
Before he died, Kurt Vonnegut gave the go-ahead that has allowed Charles Shields to construct And So It Goes, an incisive, gossipy page-turner of a biography, even if it’s hard to tell just how authorized this book really is.
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Public Speaking
“You mean people who are now in their twenties? They won’t care. People who are in their twenties will have already done this stuff, so there’s now a record. When those people are old enough to be in charge of things—which by the way I don’t ever want them to be in charge of things, and luckily, I will be dead when these people take over—everybody will have that vulnerability. When everybody is vulnerable to something it’s not a weapon.” Fran Lebowitz talks to The Awl about old New York, writer’s block, and why the politicians of the future won’t have sex tapes.
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