“I’ve learned that people—writers and non-writers alike—don’t like that word. Failure…. I take a bizarre pleasure, now, in using that word. Maybe because during my decade as a failed writer, the one thing that took the edge off was wallowing in that failure—carefully, in a proscribed fashion, like having a drink when you’re still hungover.” Stephanie Feldman writes for Vol. 1 Brooklyn about being a literary failure, about the two books she wrote and never published, and about the one she finally did. Pair with the stories of these 5 writers and their failed “novels in drawers.”
Failure
On Formative Viewings
At The Guardian’s website, Joe Queenan examines a little-known film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, that “beguiled” Martin Scorcese when he was just twelve years old.
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Libraries Pitch In
Libraries are doing double-time. At NPRs Planet Money, a librarian writes in about how her local library is offering recession resources to those most affected by unemployment.
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Paranoid Much?
At The Awl, Brian O’Neill makes the case that following the events of September 11th, America finally caught up to the mindset of Thomas Pynchon.
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Stand By Your Man
At the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the answer to a bad boyfriend is to read a few good novels. Does The Talented Mr. Ripley remind you of your lover?
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City on a Hill
As the lone mental hospital in The Magic Mountain referred to by its real name, the Hotel Schatzalp is a holy site for many Thomas Mann scholars and fans. At Page-Turner, Sally McGrane writes about the modern hotel, which employs a staff trained to deal with the occasional “literary fanatic.” (It also might be a good time to read Matthew Gallaway on Death in Venice.)
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The Magnetic Fields: Rock’s Most Bookish Band?
At the NYRB, the Magnetic Fields’ Claudia Gonson offers a sort of “Life in Reading”: “I was very into Lord Jim for a year.”
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