We’ve thought a lot about Leonard Cohen over the years. We’re perhaps, uh, not the only ones. Recently, Cohen’s love letters to Marianne Ihlen sold for a whopping $876,000. While Ihlen and Cohen’s love is recorded in songs like “So Long, Marianne,” these letters appear to preserve something more quotidian: the writing and publication of Cohen’s novels. Referring to his debut, The Favorite Game, Cohen wrote that the literary critics have “all screamed about the wild undisciplined dirty book, so it’s selling quite well.”
Leonard Cohen in Love
Ocean Vuong on Being a Participant in Creation
Discussing Book Design with Jamie Keenan
James Cartwright caught up with London-based book designer Jamie Keenan to discuss his work and his process. (Related: How do American book covers stack up against their counterparts from across the pond?)
War Stories
Matthew Jakubowski writes an experimental review of the first English translation of Mercè Rodoreda’s final novel, War, So Much War. Pair with this excerpt from the novel, which appeared in the new issue of Harper’s.
The Lonely Sidewalk-Man
Recommended (Hilarious) Reading: Mallory Ortberg from The Toast gives you every noir story set in Los Angeles in helpful, bulleted format.
Ostentatiously Withholding Information?
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is scooping up award nominations left and right. Given the relative heaping of praise, it’s interesting to hear a dissenting voice. This review from the London Review of Books offers us just that. If it’s more Yanagihara you’re after, here she is in a recent interview for The Millions.
How to Write Like a Cartoonist
“Pop Quiz: Which word is funnier, observe or stalk?” Scott Adams, creator of “Dilbert,” gives some tips on how to write like a cartoonist.