“Because at the end of the day, there is no magic solution, no short-cut, to writing something that hopefully will last. No matter how we search for one.” Jeff VanderMeer gives eight writing tips for aspiring writers in the Chicago Review of Books. See also: VanderMeer’s prolific 2017 Year in Reading entry.
Tricks of the Trade
In Other Words, All of America
Would you prefer to live in a city designed around parking, or a city designed around food?
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A Letter from a Friend
Recommended Reading: Orrin Devinsky remembers his best friend, Oliver Sacks.
Chum Lit
Some of the best novels out there — Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men — deal largely with fictional friendships. Yet depictions of close friends that are central to the plot are considerably rare in modern novels. At The Guardian, AD Miller notes this isn’t the case for movies and TV shows, and suggests a number of reasons why. You could also read our own Kevin Hartnett on friendship in the age of Facebook.
David Simon Working on a Pogues Musical
The Wire creator David Simon is at work on a Pogues musical, reports Rolling Stone. Where will they possibly find a Broadway star with the right teeth to play Shane MacGowan?
The Best Books in Translation
Open Letter Books director Chad Post teamed up with Green Apple Books buyer Stephen Sparks to make a list of their twenty favorite books in translation. Among their selections is László Krasznahorkai’s Satantango, which Adam Levy reviewed for us last year, and which Post and Sparks describe as “a diabolical, haunting deconstruction of apocalyptic messianism.”
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Excerpt from Good on Paper
Rachel Cantor’s pub day for Good on Paper (included in our first-half preview) was this Tuesday. Check out an excerpt from the novel at Lit Hub.
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