Huzzah! 336 issues of the avant-garde magazine The Storm (1910-1932) have just been digitized and are available for download. Some notable contributors to The Storm included Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and many others.
Calm Before the Storm
Maybe Now You Can Understand It.
Artist John Vernon Lord drew inspiration from Irish literature’s “books of the dark” to adapt James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake into a series of illustrated images. Over at The Guardian, Lord discusses how he developed some of his pages.
Curiosities: The Bowflex of Bookishness
The August issue of Open Letters is available. Nestled amidst the literary fare are early Oscar nominations from Sarah Hudson and a piece on the video game The Sims by Phillip A. Lobo.Electric Literature teamed up with animator Jonathan Ashley and musician Nick DeWitt to produce an animated trailer for Jim Shepard’s “Your Fate Hurtles Down at You,” a story which appeared in the literary magazine’s first issue.BOMB Magazine has a conversation between poker buddies Nam Le and Charles D’Ambrosio.Years ago, we wrote about La Porte, Indiana, a nifty book with a connection to Found Magazine chronicling a cache of found photographs from a small town. Now the book is being made into a documentary.Nicholson Baker has written the funniest piece yet about the Kindle. Ed initially takes umbrage (and gets comments from Baker and recants somewhat). YPTR weighs in as well.Spoiler Alert: neojapansme, a provider (along with our own Ben Dooley) of quite a bit of insight into Murakami’s new (and untranslated) novel 1Q84 has published a review of the book.Millions Fans: The Millions Facebook group now has over 400 members. We’ll be asking group members to help us with some upcoming special features, so join up (if you’re into that sort of thing.)Shatner… Palin… Twitter… bongos… need we say more?
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With One Eye Squinted
“I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.” The New Yorker reports on “Flannery O’Connor‘s Manhattan Memorial” and pitch-perfect quotation.
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Curiosities: Thug, Libidinal, Linoleum, Limn
The Tournament of Books rolls along with a few first round upsets (Congratulations, Sarvas!), but the highlight thus far might be a glimpse of Junot Díaz’s one-of-kind victor’s shirt from last year.Meanwhile, Stop Smiling offers up a Díaz interview.John Leonard’s son compiles a concordance to his father’s vigorous criticism, in which “thug,” “libidinal,” and “linoleum” make the top 10.The breathless inventorying of Roberto Bolaño’s posthumous papers continues.Our friend Eliza Barclay reports from the Andes, finding little cause for optimism.Victor Lavalle becomes the most recent essayist spurred to eloquence by the Obama inauguration.Also from the Atlantic, Hitchens and Marx: On again?James Wood and Claire Messud get grilled – sort of – by The Harvard Crimson: he’s the chef, she does laundry.The people who put William Kristol on payroll show themselves capable of good judgment. Congratulations, Ross Douthat!Wikipedia find of the week: beghilos (aka calculator spelling)Audrey Niffeneger is not feeling the recession. The NYT says $5 mil for The Time Traveler’s Wife follow-up.NPR explores the doodles of powerful people.CAAF spends some time with the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus and pauses on “limn.”Clay Shirky elucidates, perhaps better than most media pundits have, why newspapers need to be “thinking the unthinkable.”
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Begin Now
“You don’t have to immediately quit your job to become a writer. You need only to start writing.” The New York Times transcribes an excerpt from the “Dear Sugars” podcast with Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond. For more writerly advice, see our own columnists Swarm & Spark on whether writing a novel will jeopardize your mental health.
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Seamus Heaney’s Final Verse
The Guardian has published what may be Seamus Heaney’s final poem. The poet passed away this year at the age of 74, and his work was eloquently remembered by Trent Morris on our site soon after.