“They say ‘kill your darlings,’ but I think darlings are your voice — your favorite parts, the parts you’d admire even if you didn’t write them. Why destroy what you love? If you feel that strongly about something you’ve written, pay attention!” Elisa Gabbert pens Electric Literature‘s “Blunt Instrument” column, which this month involves how to find one’s style as a writer. And for more scrivening advice, see our own columnists Swarm & Spark on the best way to seek feedback on your work,sending a memoir into the world, and whether writing a novel will jeopardize your mental health.
The Signature of Style
The Last Sports Bar
With the Detroit Tigers in the playoffs for the second year in a row, our own Bill Morris takes to the pages of the New York Times to remember the legendary Detroit bar the Lindell A.C., where sports stars rubbed elbows with the fans.
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N.K. Jemisin on Octavia Butler
N.K. Jemisin writes an introduction to Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, in a reissued edition coming this April from Grand Central Publishing.
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Cinderella, as Told by Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit gives the classic and rather dated tale of Cinderella an empowered, nuanced update that examines cultural myths about measures of prosperity.
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Not as Scary as Meeting Norman Mailer
Readers of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature most likely have a good idea of just how much the late Norman Mailer was a wellspring of jokes about writers. The pugilistic novelist, journalist and failed mayoral candidate did choose to title a collection of his work Advertisements for Myself, after all. Yet as Andrew O’Hagan notes in the LRB, it’s hard not to admire the cojones on a guy who once told a prominent editor he was “still too young and too arrogant to care to write the kind of high-grade horseshit you print in Harper’s Bazaar.”
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Love Letters to Walt Whitman
Maria Popova over at Brain Pickings recounts the enduring epistolary friendship—one that often bordered on infatuation—between Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman.
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La Buena Educacion
At The Paris Review Daily, Pedro Almodóvar tallies the elements of cinematic comedy, which include good timing, “rapid-fire dialogue” and rehearsals that draw out spontaneous performances from actors.
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