Yesterday, one of my Curiosities included a link to an old Millions review of AM Homes’s domestically disturbing novel May We Be Forgiven. Today, she has a great new story over at The Guardian just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Be Mine
Roberto Bolaño in the NYRB Blog
“The books that I remember best are the ones I stole in Mexico City, between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, and the ones I bought in Chile when I was twenty, during the first few months of the coup.” The New York Review of Books Blog posts an essay by — you guessed it — Roberto Bolaño.
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Smackdown: Palin V. Foer
In one corner, Sarah Palin, the “bone-licker, shit-kicker, caribou-killer.” In the other, the gentle friend of animals, Jonathan Safran Foer. According to Macy Halford at the NYer blog, this fight’d be no contest.
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Where Is My Mind?
Do our brains determine how we write? Joyce Dyer explores the possibility that genre is influenced by how our brains are wired but wonders if that limits us. “The page may be forcing compromises that the brain, in such close relationship with the mind, must rightly refuse,” she writes.
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Writerly Advice
We’ve covered the Atlantic series By Heart a number of times before. In the latest edition, Angela Flournoy makes a case for writing about what you don’t know. Pair with Toni Jordan’s Millions essay on “the ideas behind fiction.”
Writing While Ill
“[C]ommunity building takes a lot of time and effort and can take a long time to pay off. It’s the long con that’s not a con.” In Electric Literature‘s “Blunt Instrument” column, Elisa Gabbert takes on the topic of writing with chronic illness and disability. See also: our own advice columnists Swarm and Spark!
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Great Deal on Siri Hustvedt’s Earlier Novel
If your interest in Siri Hustvedt’s work was piqued by Hannah Gersen’s review of The Blazing World this week, then you’ll be thrilled to learn that the Kindle version of Hustvedt’s earlier novel, Summer Without Men, is available through 4/8 for the low, low price of $3.99.
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