“The morning after the opening sentence took shape, Heller “arrived at work”—at the Merrill Anderson Company—“with my pastry and container of coffee and a mind brimming with ideas, and immediately in longhand put down on a pad the first chapter of an intended novel.” The handwritten manuscript totaled about 20 pages. He titled it Catch-18. The year was 1953.” Happy Birthday Joseph Heller, author of the anti-war classic Catch-22, born this day in 1923 in Coney Island, New York.
Happy Birthday, Joseph Heller
Tell Shorter Stories
"The real world is massive and chaotic beyond the scope of any story, but the novel has always been the storytelling medium that could come closest to capturing it. And the novels that dared to really try – from Hugo to Tolstoy – are often the ones that have endured." That's not to say, of course, that bigger is always better, and in an article for The Guardian Damien Walter argues against the current glut of epic, serialized fantasy novels taking their cues from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. As Walter puts it, "There are great fantasy short stories, novellas and single novels that deserve much wider audiences, but are sidelined by the industry’s unhealthy fixation with the serial format. It’s time for the fantasy genre to tell some new – shorter – stories."
The Story Behind the Letter
Letters of Note posted an incredible letter from a former slave, and Kottke rounded up some more info he and others uncovered about the letter writer.
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Fish N a Barrel
The Vault chooses the "20 Worst Hip-Hop Album Covers". Sorry, South Coast Shorty.
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The Fault in Our Canon
Do we need a Young Adult canon, what might one look like, and why should we even care? Kelly Jensen at Bookriot has some ideas. Here’s a related essay from The Millions on YA literature and the talking cure.
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Why College Professors Don’t Envy the Young
On Why College Professors Don't Envy the Young, at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
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Pride and Proto-Feminisim
"The literary type of burlesque also peels off layers ... They are bolder and more coarsely humorous pieces that go beyond silly copies, like turbo-charged parodies. Jane Austen’s burlesques were full-on irreverent, turning a thing on its head, forcing us to peek underneath to see its naked absurdities." On the proto-feminist snark of a young Jane Austen.
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