Our own Emily St. John Mandel gives a glimpse of her life on the road. “I’d been on tour for so long that I had to take a picture of my hotel room door every time I checked into a new place, because otherwise I’d forget my room number,” she writes. For more of her writing, check out her Millions essay on the place where writers work.
Welcome to the Book Tour
A Method to the Madness
All the world is about to become a stage. The Globe Theatre will be performing Hamlet in every country on Earth starting on April 23, 2014, Shakespeare’s 450th birthday. The 205-nation tour should take two years. This is one of many Shakespearean anniversary celebrations including contemporary authors covering his classics.
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Western Culture is Rape Culture
Recommended Reading: Amy Gentry writes on the effects of rape culture and its permeations through art and literature. “I realize that what I’m describing here isn’t a list of books I’d like to see banned from the classroom; in fact, it is a list of my favorite books. It also a solid bit of evidence that Western culture is rape culture. Or, to put it another way: rape culture is just culture-culture. If only there were a trigger warning big enough for that.”
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The Inventor
There’s a new biography of Angela Carter on shelves. Is it worth your time, even if you’re not a fan? In The New York Review of Books, Alison Lurie gives the book a thorough read.
Building Up
It’s fitting that Ray Bradbury credited his interest in architecture to an H.G. Wells story he read when he was five. At The Paris Review Daily, a previously unpublished essay by the author, who says his career in architecture started when he noticed there was no plaque at the residence of Sherlock Holmes. Related: Tanjil Rashid on Bradbury’s connection to the Middle East.
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“You’re a fiction writing professor.”
“You have a hard time imagining how the things you’ve experienced or discovered, which seem abjectly personal, could be of use to another writer. You’re aware that you can follow every single rule in the book, and still write a crappy story.” The Preservationist author Justin Kramon grapples with the idea of teaching writing to college students.
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Encountering an Enfant Terrible
It’s 1957. You’re Truman Capote. Your editor at The New Yorker, inspired in part by an excellent sense of humor, has asked you to write about an upcoming film (based on a novel by James Michener) that stars none other than Marlon Brando. How do you handle it?
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