At the Creative Independent, Lucy Ives discusses her new story collection, Cosmogony, and how she accepted the struggle of balancing a writing life with making a living. “It takes a lot of practice,” Ives says. “I think people don’t talk about that, that writing itself—not just like, ‘Oh, it’s hard.’ But that it isn’t natural. It’s like playing the piano or something like that. You have to stay with it to be able to do it well, or be happy with what you’re doing. I don’t have great advice about it, because I think, to me, at least, it remains a struggle, but I think you also get more accepting of the fact that it is a bit of a struggle all the time.”
Accepting the Struggle with Lucy Ives
Finnegans Wake Hits Chinese Shelves
I don’t know how they managed to translate the thunderwords into Chinese, but if sales figures indicate success, they did a bang up job. Finnegans Wake is huge in China right now.
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Ever Read a Posthumous Interview?
“I certainly didn’t want to do something that felt as if I was having a séance. I started with her most personal papers. I wanted her interior voice; I didn’t want the formal writing. I went immediately to her diaries and letters and to the commonplace books. From there I started looking at the marginalia because I was getting a sense of wanting to know what was on her mind while she was writing in her journals.” Lynell George conducted a posthumous interview with Octavia Butler, Bomb magazine talked to her about the process. Pair it with this essay on slavery in fiction from our own Edan Lepucki.
Uncertain Origin
The Wall Street Journal has shared an exclusive look at the cover art for, and an excerpt from, Elena Ferrante’s new book. Also check out Cora Currier’s essay on reading Italy through Ferrante’s books.“
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A Man in Monte Carlo
It will take you longer to read this Curiosity and click through to its attached link than it would for you to simply read Anton Chekhov’s shortest-ever short story in its entirety.
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Election Heat Map: Book Edition
Amazon created an “Election Heat Map” to tally the number of “red” and “blue” books sold across the nation, and the count is updated hourly. The results are somewhat surprising to those who believe liberals read more than conservatives. (Perhaps liberals frequent more independent bookstores?) At the time of this writing, “red” books are favored by a margin of 7%.
Looking Back
The Morning News “gathered writers and thinkers around the world and asked them to sift through the past year of revolutions, deaths, discoveries, and breakthroughs to answer: What was the most important event of 2011?”
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La Buena Educacion
At The Paris Review Daily, Pedro Almodóvar tallies the elements of cinematic comedy, which include good timing, “rapid-fire dialogue” and rehearsals that draw out spontaneous performances from actors.
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