The Waves
Let’s Trade Manuscripts
"If you ask around, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a really bad novel easily enough. I mean a novel by someone who has spent isolated years writing a book they are convinced is a great work of literature. And when you’re reading it you’ll know it’s bad, and you’ll know what bad truly is." What makes bad writing so bad? Toby Litt at The Guardian investigates.
How Do You Illustrate Footnotes?
Seven Stories Press is publishing three volumes of a Graphic Canon, which will illustrate and panel everything from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Infinite Jest. Their first volume, Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons will be released on May 22nd.
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Crosswords Uncrossed
Even if you've already seen the outstanding documentary Wordplay, you'll still want to check out this Atlantic article on how Will Shortz makes his New York Times crossword puzzles.
A Gut-Wrenching Account and an Ethical Nightmare
A dissection of Jonathan Franzen's recent New Yorker essay on David Foster Wallace finds Franzen's wires showing.
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Whitman Passes Away
George Whitman, owner of the storied Parisian English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company, died this week at the age of 98.
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RIP John Ashbery
The New York Times is reporting that the poet John Ashbery has died. A major figure in American letters, Ashbery won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in a single year for his book Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. The full Times obituary has more.
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