Night Watch
But just maybe you’ll beat the odds
If you find yourself in a sporting mood, you can place a bet on who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I personally like Alice Munro’s 20/1 odds for taking the award, though Haruki Murakami’s 10/1 make him the safer bet.
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Meet Jesus Makes The Shotgun Sound
What do SoCal’s “vapid consumerism, gang violence, and social apathy” sound like? Jesus Makes The Shotgun Sound! Brace yourself and have a listen to their Raidohead-y latest single, “Do Not The Clothes Make The Man?!” or, if you’re looking to induce epileptic fits, try the video.
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Cross Off and Move On
Equipment for today’s lunch hour: 1) somewhere sunny and out-of-doors to sit; 2) failing that, a gazebo or other shelter from inclement weather; 3) a printout of Deborah Eisenberg‘s latest short story, from the current NYRB; 4) undivided attention.
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Kickstarting The Riveter
That Kickstarter is offering more opportunities than ever to literary projects, from Coffee House Press’s Catstarter to the Joan Didion documentary to the Reading Rainbow spin-off, is indisputable. Now there’s yet another worthy cause turning to the crowd-sourcing platform in search of an audience: The Riveter, a magazine of longform journalism by women.
Coffee House + Emily Books
Coffee House Press recently announced it will be partnering with Emily Books, whose co-founder Emily Gould is a Year in Reading alum, to form their first imprint, which will publish two original titles a year. Their news pairs well with Electric Literature‘s “2015 Indie Press Preview.”
Final Thoughts
“If this was our own son and daughter, would we stop loving them simply because they had dreams of making it big on the stage, or in a career that few people actually respect? No way.” Jerry Springer on making art.
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Odd Jobs
Recommended viewing: The New Yorker‘s Adam Gopnik talks about his early years in New York writing for the magazine “though they simply weren’t aware of it, or when they were aware of it they were extremely unenthusiastic,” and about all the odd jobs that often make up a writer’s early career, something our own Emily St. James Mandel has written about before.