“Welcome to the resistance, bunny.” Currently sold out on Amazon after topping the book charts for days, The New Yorker writes about John Oliver‘s charming children’s book, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. Pair with: an essay about reconnecting with childhood favorites as a parent.
A Very Special Bunny
What Improv Can Teach You about Writing Humor
Elissa Bassist took an intro improv class and used what she learned to create some rules for writing funny fiction. (Thanks, Rachel)
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Felt Time
“As phenomenological philosophy has determined, self-consciousness is not a mental state that is added on to our experience, or that is particular; rather, it is a feature inherent in all experience. My perception contains me.” Send your Sunday into an existential tailspin with German psychologist Marc Wittmann and his heady ideas about the notion of time and consciousness.
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Lit Mag Happenings
Just released: the latest issue of DIAGRAM, which is consistently one of the most interesting magazines in publication. Coming soon: Hobart‘s 15th issue, which is focused on “Hotel Culture,” and will hit shelves in February/March. (Although you can preorder a copy now.)
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Confessions of a Ghostwriter
“There are people out there who want you to write their novels for them,” observes professional ghostwriter Sari Botton. Over at Scratch, she shares some advice for breaking into the industry. Also, the magazine has made her longer article about “the spooky finances behind her gigs” free to read – all you have to do is register.
Courtney Zoffness Puts Messiness on Display
Courtney Zoffness discusses her book, Spilt Milk, and how writing it was an exercise in embracing uncertainty.
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Lolita, Cover Girl
Lolita has been, for decades, a great inspiration to cover designers, and all those great covers inspired architect John Bertram to hold his own cover design contest to see who could best re-imagine Nabokov’s classic. The resulting competition has now inspired a book, coming in August, with a cover by designers Sulki & Min that references a letter Nabokov sent to his American publisher, Walter J. Minton of Putnam, in April 1959 about the cover design for Lolita. “I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain. And no girls. If we cannot find that kind of artistic and virile painting, let us settle for an immaculate white jacket (rough texture paper instead of the usual glossy kind), with LOLITA in bold black lettering.” More: An interview with Bertram.
There Once Was a Girl
Recommended Reading: “There Once Was a Girl” by Katy Waldman at Slate. “Anorexia is the mental health equivalent of the red shoes that make you dance until you die. It is a performance—of femininity, of damage, of power—that turns into a prison.”