Planning to attend this Saturday’s National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.? The Washington Post has provided five sample itineraries. And for an entirely different, vicarious trip, revisit Mythili G. Rao‘s account of visiting the Jaipur Literature Festival a few years back: “To voice their disapproval of the circumstances of Salman Rushdie’s absence, four writers read from The Satanic Verses — a book that has been banned in India. They were advised to leave. What kind of real intellectual discussion could go on in a setting that had proved itself so hospitable to self-censorship?”
Eat Your Heart Out, Fyre
Jack Ryan is Real
Jack Ryan really exists and even teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy. Vulture's Dan Solomon met the real Jack Ryan and discussed what it's like to have the same name as Tom Clancy's hero. No, he has never used the connection as a pick-up line. Pair with: Our in memoriam of Clancy.
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Between Mind and Feet
Ferris Jabr writes for The New Yorker on the "profound relationship between walking, thinking, and writing," and cites books such as Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway as evidence this "curious link between mind and feet" is a serious literary force. After you've finished reading Jabr's piece, be sure to check out Michelle Huneven's essay "On Walking and Reading at the Same Time," and then perhaps go for a little stroll with a good book.
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Notes from Eula Biss
"I’m not convinced that the questions that have been raised for me by the writing I love the most could be answered by the authors themselves." A new interview with Eula Biss, author of Notes from No Man's Land, is up on NEA's Art Works Blog.
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The Desk on the Floss
Stop, thief! It appears that George Eliot's writing desk has been stolen from the Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery in England.
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