Recommended Reading: Apogee Journal has collected fourteen responses from writers to sexual violence perpetrated in the literary community.
Become Louder, Even Still
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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Sincerely, John Updike
“James Schiff, an associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, is working on a volume of Updike’s letters and has unearthed thousands of letters, postcards, and notes the author sent to complete strangers who wrote to him.” The Guardian writes about an in-progress book of John Updike‘s letters that reveals how often the writer corresponded with not only his contemporaries, like John Barth and Joyce Carol Oates, but his readers as well. See also: an essay about the personal and literary relationship between Barth and Updike.
Douglas Adams Poem Unearthed
This month, a Brentwood School archivist unearthed a two-page poem entitled “A Dissertation on the task of writing a poem on a candle and an account of some of the difficulties thereto pertaining.” The kicker? It was written by a 17-year-old Douglas Adams, nine years before he published The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Ann Patchett’s Project
This week, Ann Patchett, author of the recent book State of Wonder, has launched an ambitious, much-buzzed project — a new independent bookstore in the author’s hometown of Nashville, Tenn.
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Big Sky
I’ve written before about Literary Enemies, a series at the Ploughshares blog in which two writers are shown to have opposing sensibilities. This week, Lily Meyer argues that Flannery O’Connor and Marilynne Robinson are a worthy addition to the series, as the former contracts narrative space and the latter expands it. Sample quote: “It seems to me that Marilynne Robinson’s project, in her books suffused with Protestant belief, has nothing to do with Jesus or with God.”
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