Tim Parks writes at NYRB about the constraints that the marketplace puts on writers’ creativity. For more on publishing and the marketplace, check out our column on The Future of the Book.
Marketing Creativity
Kool As the Other Side of the Pillow
"If you lack a competent distributor down here, then consider me at your service. Nothing would make me happier than to drive Salems off the market for good and ever. It’s without a doubt the foulest cigarette in the history of tobacco-addicted man—a tasteless mish-mash of paper and dry weeds." Boy, Hunter S. Thompson really hated Salems.
He Started It
Those of you with brothers or sisters will not be surprised to learn that siblings who are both writers tend to be a wee bit competitive. In a piece for the Poetry Foundation, Casey N. Cep runs through a few famous examples, among them the Bröntes, the Wordsworths and Charles and Mary Lamb. (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)
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The Downside to Living with William Carlos Williams
At McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, a disgruntled Laura Jayne Martin rants about why she is tired of sharing an apartment with poet William Carlos Williams.
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Clash of the Esoterics
Two guys who can talk about just about anything - Nicholson Baker and NPR's Tom Ashbrook - did just that yesterday on On Point, as Baker promoted his latest opus, The Anthologist.
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Unpredictable Lit
“These people may not take you seriously. And your boss might not either. Or your dentist or your best friend from middle school. But you who does take you seriously? Dictators. Dictators take you very seriously. Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Augusto Pinochet, all rounded up writers and artists in short order. They could not afford to have the unpredictability of literature at large while they were trying to create a totalitarian state.” Wendy Willis on subversion through writing for The Rumpus.
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One Kind of Coating
At Bookforum, Gee Henry talks with New Yorker staff writer Hilton Als, whose new collection of essays, White Girls, tackles subjects including Eminem, Truman Capote and Gone with the Wind. The writer also delves into his affection for André Leon Talley.
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