“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
Confessions of a Theorist
"This is the odd space these Theory Generation novels inhabit, making them peculiar novels of ideas. Their writers have read enough Theory at a young enough age to be in continued thrall to its power; they do justice to the disorienting shock those texts once had, and perhaps still have. Yet they are old enough to ironize (tenderly or bitterly) that power." Are you a member of the theory generation?
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2017’s Independent Bookstore Day
Next Saturday (April 29) is Independent Bookstore Day! If you’re looking for a place to celebrate, check out our staff recommendations of tried and true mainstays. You can also map out the stores Janet Potter’s “bookstore resume,” which she freely admits has taken “the shape of a relationship history.”
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Australian Best
Lit-mag Meanjin Quarterly is taking a cue from The Millions and kicking off a new series, The Best Australian Fiction of the 21st Century (so far).
Pork Problem
"First, catch your pig." This is the beginning of Harper Lee's recipe for cornbread, but it's not the first time pork has preoccupied her writing. At The Paris Review, Sadie Stein examines the use of ham in Lee's fiction.
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Greatly Exaggerated
At 74, Clive James is a remarkably prolific poet, one who’s working hard to finish or publish three books in the next year alone. He spoke with Douglas Murray of The Spectator about his unflagging energy. “At the moment, I am in the slightly embarrassing position where I write poems saying I am about to die and I don’t,” he says. You could also read our own Garth Risk Hallberg on James’s book Cultural Amnesia.
Choose Your Own Epiphany
With the help of the folks at Ploughshares and Medium, Year in Reading alumna Megan Mayhew Bergman is publishing a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure literary short story. To participate, read the first chapter (as well as the introduction) online, then tweet Bergman to tell her where the story should go from there.
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E(volving)-Books from Black Balloon
Black Balloon created an “evolving e-book” iPad app for Louise Krug’s new memoir, Louise: Amended, and they’re giving it away for free! Plus, to sweeten the deal even further, emailing a request for the promo code will automatically enter you into a drawing for a $100 Powell’s gift card.
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