Libraries are, for many of us, the public places where we bring our most private selves, our fears and our dreams, so long buried and so studiously unspoken. The librarian checking out a stack of books may be for many of us, the equivalent of the first person we’ve told a secret to. Which brings me to the real reason I chose the profession that I did for my narrator: Even more than libraries, I love librarians.As Others See Us: An Author On Why She Loves Librarians
posted by carsonb
on Nov 24, 2010 -
30 comments
"There's something very shabby about a noble grave... Political power and the power of wealth result in splendid graves. Really impressive graves, you know. Such creatures never had any imagination while they lived, and quite naturally their graves don't leave any room for imagination either. But noble people live only on the imaginations of themselves and others, and so they leave graves like this one which inevitably stir one's imagination. And this I find even more wretched. Such people, you see, are obliged even after they are dead to continue begging people to use their power of imagination." -
Yukio Mishima via Kashiwagi in
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. On this, the anniversary of Mishima's transformation into a headless god, a collection of video links.
[more inside]
posted by eccnineten
on Nov 25, 2008 -
11 comments
To The Best Of Our Knowledge is one of the most wide-ranging and literate public radio shows in the US, a two-hour "radio salon" featuring leisurely exploration of weekly themes like
No Smoking,
Identity Crisis,
Weekend, and
The Mind, Music, and Math. Host
Jim Fleming approaches these big ideas through the works of authors - journalists of all stripes, memoirists, poets, fiction writers, essayists.
Five years' worth of shows are available on audio archives; you can also search the impressive list of
authors by name, or
subscribe to the podcast.
[more inside]
posted by Miko
on Feb 27, 2008 -
17 comments
Booktribes is a new site from the creators of
writing site Abctales where bibliophiles can compile lists of every book they've ever read. Replete with a simple, intuitive interface, compiling your life's reading list becomes strangely addictive, and for the whole of March, the best comment of the day on this as-yet underpopulated site wins a copy of David Mitchell's
Black Swan Green, with the best comment of the month winning the entire 21 volume Sceptre Collection. And if you're worried your reading list isn't up to scratch, don't panic -
you can always cheat.
posted by RokkitNite
on Mar 3, 2007 -
20 comments
In those days, he could do no wrong. In the Sixties, he was the man who published Catch-22, Portnoy's Complaint and Hemingway's A Moveable Feast; he put John Lennon's doodles into cold print, launched the careers of John Fowles and Gabriel García Márquez, looked after Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut and later, in the early 1980s, was the godfatherly mentor of Amis
fils, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie. He was equally adept at commissioning inspired non-fictions such as The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris's zoological inspection of human behaviour.
The Independent profiles Tom Maschler,
publisher, founder of the Booker Prize.
(via Bookslut)
posted by matteo
on Mar 17, 2005 -
7 comments
Will Eisner Dies at age 86 The father of the modern Graphic Novel and hugely influential comics figure has died today from heart surgery complications. His concept of
Sequential Art helped move comics out of the idea of being solely "kid's stuff" and was seen as a cannon in the comic art world.
He was working on a book called "The Plot" due out later this year. He will be missed. More info and Eisner Bio at
Newsarama
posted by Jeffy
on Jan 4, 2005 -
54 comments
How much money do first-time novelists make? Author and upcoming first-time novelist
Justine Larbalestier is constantly asked by aspiring writers what first-time novelists should expect in advance payment for their beloved texts. So she asked some of her author friends what they got for their first novels. The responses ranged in time from 1962 to 2004. What didn't change in all that time was the basic amount: Not much. Quoth Larbalestier: "The life of a novelist is, financially speaking, a mug's game.
Enter at your own peril."
posted by jscalzi
on Dec 24, 2004 -
66 comments
100 key books “Cyril Connolly chose 100 key books from England, France and America first published between 1880 and 1950 to represent ‘The Modern Movement’.”
This site asks:
“How does the list look now, in the first decade of the 21st Century?”
“an additional list of key books is needed for 1950 to 2000. What should be included and why? Does Connolly's selection criteria need adjusting [just England (when so many of the books are from Ireland), France and America!] and if so how should this be done, remembering that Connolly was very precise in delineating the list as Key books, not best books?”
posted by Grod
on Sep 17, 2004 -
18 comments
Critique Magazine's
On Writing III -
Each year, Critique Magazine's staff compiles essays by and interviews with writers, teachers, and translators of merit for inclusion in the special anniversary edition "On Writing".
Basically, a
shitload of authors provide thoughts on, ahem, writing.
{Both sites are worth a look, imo.}
posted by dobbs
on Sep 15, 2004 -
18 comments
Kinsley goes Zola on Brooks "In his writing and on television, he actually seems reasonable. More than that, he seems cuddly. He gives the impression of being open to persuasion. Like the elderly Jewish lady who thinks someone must be Jewish because ''he's so nice,'' liberals suspect that a writer as amiable as Brooks must be a liberal at heart. Some conservatives think so too."
via A&L Daily
posted by leotrotsky
on May 22, 2004 -
6 comments
Choose Your Own New York You're in town to visit your wealthy and eccentric Aunt Ginny, who is spending the day having her blood replaced with Botox on the Upper East Side. Now you have the entire day to yourself to explore the most exciting city in the world! -- A Choose Your Own Adventure story, updated.
posted by amberglow
on May 18, 2004 -
11 comments
Anonymous midlist author tells horror story (Salon: viewing of annoying ad required, but it's well worth it) "In the 10 years since I signed my first book contract, the publishing industry has changed in ways that are devastating [...] to midlist authors like me. [...]
What once was about literature is now about return on investment. What once was hand-sold one by one by well-read, book-loving booksellers now moves by the pallet-load at Wal-Mart and Borders -- or doesn't move at all." (more inside)
posted by Prospero
on Mar 22, 2004 -
117 comments
Why Books Will Always Be With Us... along with almost everything else.
Umberto Eco goes all encyclopedic on us (but in a nice way!) summing up (and reopening) the themes of a lifetime of reading, writing and watching. Though I'm sure what he says about the Web and electronic media will be picked to bits here, I'd say that would be a perfect vindication of this extraordinary exercise in common sense. [
Via Arts & Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Nov 26, 2003 -
14 comments
Gore Vidal releases new book about the founding fathers, has some words for the current administration. Vidal: But mostly we find the sort of corruption Franklin predicted. Ours is a totally corrupt society. The presidency is for sale. Whoever raises the most money to buy TV time will probably be the next president. This is corruption on a major scale.
Enron was an eye-opener to naive lovers of modern capitalism. Our accounting brotherhood, in its entirety, turned out to be corrupt, on the take. With the government absolutely colluding with them and not giving a damn.
Bush’s friend, old Kenny Lay, is still at large and could just as well start some new company tomorrow. If he hasn’t already. No one is punished for squandering the people’s money and their pension funds and for wrecking the economy.
So the corruption predicted by Franklin bears its terrible fruit. No one wants to do anything about it. It’s not even a campaign issue. Once you have a business community that is so corrupt in a society whose business is business, then what you have is, indeed, despotism. It is the sort of authoritarian rule that the Bush people have given us.
posted by skallas
on Nov 15, 2003 -
61 comments
Play money is a blog about a guy trying to make money selling artifacts from online games. The guy is Julian Dibbell, whose
work has been discussed on metafilter before.
posted by rdr
on Oct 20, 2003 -
11 comments
Faery Lands Forlorn A.S. Byatt, author of
Possession and other novels, looks at the phenomenon of adults reading the Harry Potter children's books:
Ms. Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous. It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip. Its values, and everything in it, are, as Gatsby said of his own world when the light had gone out of his dream, "only personal." Nobody is trying to save or destroy anything beyond Harry Potter and his friends and family.... Ms. Rowling, I think, speaks to an adult generation that hasn't known, and doesn't care about, mystery. They are inhabitants of urban jungles, not of the real wild. They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had.
posted by Artifice_Eternity
on Jul 7, 2003 -
105 comments
After 'The Bell Jar,' Life Went On. Sylvia Plath immortalized the guest editor program at Mademoiselle Magazine in her famed book, "The Bell Jar." A photo of the 20 young guest editors was taken back in 1953, and they were all lined up in a star -- with Plath, unsurprisingly, at the top. Plath killed herself in 1971, but the other women in her program reunited recently, to discuss their experiences, how they've changed, and their famous classmate. A fascinating read for anyone who's read "The Bell Jar." (NY Times reg required)
posted by GaelFC
on Jun 23, 2003 -
24 comments
