Recommended Reading: Almost a century ago, two students at Oxford wrote back to Ophelia: “Ophelia racked with phantasy, / And Sigismunda, sick with rue — / Ladies, why did ye choose to die / When all the world was made for you?” Find out more about the poets Doreen Wallace and Eleanore Geach at The Toast. We recently wrote about why authors continually turn to Shakespeare.
Answering Ophelia
Alexander Chee on a Life in Restaurants
Alexander Chee remembers his time as a waiter in New York City, particularly when he (almost) met his favorite childhood author.
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Is Social Publishing the Future?
Loudpoet has an interview with former Soft Skull Press publisher Richard Nash about his new social publishing venture Cursor. ““Social” is taking the book and making it much easier to have a conversation with the book and its writer, and have conversations around the book and its writer.” Is this a way forward for beleaguered publishers? (via The Lone Gunman)
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“Hardly Shakesperean at first”
Recommended Reading: Ted Widmer on the miscellaneous writings of Abraham Lincoln.
George Eliot & Siblings
Recommended reading: Sara Paretsky writes for The Independent on George Eliot‘s The Mill on the Floss and the sibling bond so seldom portrayed in English fiction.
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Alone in the Dark
For the most part, your average writer’s retreat is a pretty cushy place. Its amenities are designed to let its guests turn their energies to the difficulties of artistic work. At The Paris Review Daily, Rex Weiner writes a dispatch from a different sort of retreat — a haunted house for writers in Mexico. To read about a more traditional experience, check out our own Michael Bourne on his time at Bread Loaf.