The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults in History (Flavorwire)
3. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce
“[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”
The Believer Interview with Joan Didion
JD: It was as a child. I was four or five, and my mother gave me a big black tablet, because I kept complaining that I was bored. She said, “Then write something. Then you can read it.” In fact, I had just learned to read, so this was a thrilling kind of moment. The idea that I could write something—and then read it!
Fightin’ Words
Lit Lawyers: The Fake Memoir Business (New Yorker)
“Judges and juries ruling on the various qualities of books may strike us as odd, and perhaps even dangerous—especially weighing the various merits of fact and fiction—but literature and the law are natural companions, in that they both center on the meaning of words and interpretation of text.”
Judging Clarence Thomas
In “Skip the Legalese and Keep It Short, Justices Say” (NPR), Nina Totenberg reports on a bunch of 2007 interviews in which Supreme Court Justices discuss their writing processes, and their relationship to words. Most of them credit great fiction authors with having some influence over their ideas about what constitutes good writing.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “[Nabokov] was a man in love with the sound of words. He changed the way I read, the way I write.”
Justice Clarence Thomas: “I like buses and football and cars.”
The Periodic Table of Storytelling
Science.
LISTEN TO SUSAN STAMBERG
ACTUALLY
that little NYT Gary Shteyngart piece is really good.
He just like walks around and eats.
Then I like to get up to Central Park — I’ll take the subway, or a taxi or something. I like Cedar Hill. Maybe because it’s so close to my psychiatrist’s office. My brain is open all day during the week, and there I close my brain and close my eyes, and there’s so much different food inside me, all these animals are in there making nice.
Love him.
'Bridesmaids': Am I Doing Being A Woman Wrong? (The Awl)
Haven’t seen Bridesmaids yet, so I can’t comment, but this response by Michelle Dean is killer.
“Yes yes yes, I heard you, Judd Apatow, Paul Feig, every dissenting male commenter on an article about women and comedy, ever: nothing should be sacred in comedy. The problem is exactly that, though. Your view of what is and isn’t sacred is remarkably rigid. (Also, boring.) Pretty, thin ladies being amazing? Sacred. Fat women being ugly? Sacred. Women who you don’t want to sleep with being anything other than objects of ridicule? Well, that’s going too far! You are all, the lot of you, positively catholic about such things. I’m sure you believe yourselves to be nice guys, “letting” the women have a movie like this one—but I, for one, don’t thank you for it.”
THE WORLD’S MOST INSPIRING BOOKSTORES (SALON)
“Cardboard signs, musty paperback aromas, and a hand-scrawled map out of a Wes Anderson panic attack are your only tour guides as you lose track of time and the person you came with. Outside, it’s urban decay. Inside, it’s a creaking, pulsing monument to how much Kindles suck.” (John King Books, Detroit)
TWENTY ODD QUESTIONS WITH DANIELLE STEEL (WALL STREET JOURNAL)
“I go to bed late and wake up early, but for the few hours I’m actually in my bed I like sleeping on beautiful Pratesi sheets. I love wonderful bedding, wonderful towels and wonderful soaps. I work with a charity that provides supplies for the homeless and I always try to include a bar of really nice soap.”
Comments Written By Actual Students Extracted From Workshopped Manuscripts At A Major University (McSweeney's)
“You talk about pregnant raindrops and chaos and auditory canals and ‘the passing of time’ as ‘an orifice,’ when you could really just be talking about humidity and ears.”
