Two years ago, Allison Parrish produced a diary of an expedition through “fantastical places that do not exist.” The twist? The diary was generated by a computer program, which extracted more than 5,700 sentences drawn from Project Gutenberg and later recombined at random by “switching out grammatical constituents.” An extract of the finished work, interspersed with Parrish’s nonfiction essay, can be read here.
Allison Parrish’s Generated Novel
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”
“You want to know who I am? If I wanted to have anything written on my tombstone, I would have, ‘Ask my children or ask my students.’ I actually never thought of it quite that way. That wouldn’t be a bad epitaph.” An excerpt from Studs Terkel‘s oral history of death, Will The Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, is now available online.
●
●
Tweet Like a Fiend
“Keep a close eye on your Twitter account. Important things may be said there that you will be expected to weigh in on, and if you don’t, everyone will wonder if you fell asleep in the bathroom stall of the bar last night and are still there, head sunken low next to the toilet, one lost contact lens embedded somewhere in the floor grime. Make sure they know you’re not; that was the you of 100 million years ago.” Jen Doll on writing and not-writing.
●
●
Drawing Autism
A recent Curiosity noted autistic British artist Stephen Wiltshire drawing the New York City skyline from memory. A new book Drawing Autism will collect the work of other autistic artists. Wiltshire chose not to be in the book because he didn’t want to be seen as “just” an autistic artist. More from the book.
●
●
The Harvard Hoaxer’s Bibliography
The Harvard Hoaxer‘s not-to-be-missed resume (pdf) includes several impressive under-contract book projects, including The Mapping of an Ideological Demesne; Wampum and the Origins of American Money; and A Short History of North America. Pretty impressive, for a 23-year-old.
The Other Bill of Rights
“I can read whatever I want. No one can stop me. I can help other people read what they want. And no one can stop them.” Zoe Fisher for The Rumpus about being “a horny queer teenager” who found her home in libraries. Pair with a controversial piece from our own pages this week by Douglas Koziol, a bookseller exploring what to do with “a book that you not only find objectionable but also believe actually dangerous in the lessons it portends amidst such a politically precarious time?”
●
●
‘I’m going to begin by telling you about Miss Frost.’
Simon & Schuster has posted an excerpt of John Irving’s forthcoming novel In One Person.
●
●