Recommended Reading: An essay by novelist Siri Hustvedt on the cultural significance of hair from the forthcoming collection Me, My Hair, and I in The New Republic.
Shear Brilliance
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NYC Bookshop Map
Why New York’s Indie bookstores should copy London and create a “Bookshop Map of the City.”
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From Fantasy to Allegory
“Fantasy is a tool of the storyteller. It is a way of talking about things that are not, and cannot be, literally true. It is a way of making our metaphors concrete, and it shades into myth in one direction, allegory in another.” Neil Gaiman reviews Kazuo Ishiguro‘s The Buried Giant for the New York Times Book Review and considers the power, and risks, of fantasy. Pair with Ishiguro’s talk with The Telegraph about the 10 years since the publication of Never Let Me Go.
“YA fiction has blossomed outside the literary world’s prestige economy.”
In response to an article in the Atlantic observing that women dominate the world of YA fiction, Laura Miller wonders whether men avoid and women embrace YA fiction for the same reason: it offers little prestige.
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It’s Okay, I Guess
If your default mood hovers between melancholy and despair, you may be cheered (or at least made a bit less glum) by this argument that striving for happiness is bad for us in the long run. Mari Ruti makes the case that a “happy, balanced life” depends in large part on a kind of emotional numbness.
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Behind the Screenwriter
Novelists, poets, and playwrights aren’t the only people who can call themselves writers. Don’t forget the oft begrudged screenwriters. The New York Times highlights 14 of this year’s best screenwriters, including Julie Deply and Seth Rogen, and asks them for writing advice and one original line of dialogue for some excellent short films. Our favorite short film is Robert Redford’s.