Thirty-eight letters written from the To Kill a Mockingbird author to a friend from 2005-2010 are up for auction this week, including Harper Lee‘s reaction to Barack Obama‘s inauguration. See also: this close reading of the birds themselves.
The Harper Lee Industry Chugs On
David Mitchell’s Next Novel
In an interview about his Russian fans, Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell shares some details about his next book project. Put simply, “It’s about an immortal being that gets reincarnated as different men and women,” Mitchell says.
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“How like a prison is my cubicle…”
In May, poet David Lehman wrote the first line of a sonnet about cubicle anomie and began crowdsourcing the rest. The completed 12-week project at The American Scholar is not merely a pretty great piece on its own, but a lesson in how to write one, line by line: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8/9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. You can submit your title suggestion as late as midnight on Sunday, but we suggest getting a start on it now, while the prison of work is still fresh in mind. (h/t The New York Times)
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Tune in next week
Emily Nussbaum on the poetry of cliffhangers, “which makes visible the storyteller’s connection to his audience—like a bridge made out of lightning. Primal and unashamedly manipulative, cliffhangers are the signature gambit of serial storytelling.”
The Man Who Clothed the World
“No one took this further, with more imagination and daring…At a time when American groups would often dress down—affluent suburban kids disguised as Appalachian farmers or Canadian lumberjacks – Bowie quite deliberately dressed up.” David Bowie’s sartorial legacy.
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The Starship Lands
Sarah Blake has completed her twelve-part illustrated epic poem, The Starship, at Berfrois. Pair with our essay on why Americans read poetry but won’t buy poetry books.
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She was the shadow of the waxwork lain
A waxwork being billed as “the most accurate likeness of author Jane Austen” ever created has been unveiled at her museum in Bath, England.