In the short story “The End of Books,” one character says, "I do not believe (and the progress of electricity and modern mechanism forbids me to believe) that Gutenberg’s invention can do otherwise than sooner or later fall into desuetude.” - Open Culture
“I am not entirely sure if said snobbishness is about books or readers, and that, right there, is the ugly little thought that made me ask: Are conversations about escapism actually about what people read, or how they read it?” - Reactor
Yeats used the lantern to light his way on a winding staircase in his castle’s tower. A century later, a multimedia artist “carried the fragile artefact from Provincetown, at the northern tip of Cape Cod, in a ‘Grow Greener’ shopping bag, protected by layers of bubble wrap.” - Irish Times
“This is not a new story. Ernest Hemingway would not have had the time to write were it not for the rich women he was involved with. Marcel Proust would never have written In Search of Lost Time without generational wealth.” - Irish Times
Nnedi Okorafor, with her Death of the Author coming out this week, was "worried about exposing so much of herself in the novel: her early, life-defining accident, her sometimes tense relationships with her parents and siblings, … even her experiences as a successful author.” - The New York Times
Especially when they’re Black. Why? Diversity syndrome, "a cultural condition where the ‘otherness’ of an author is elevated over the impact of their work, to the detriment of the author, their work, and their audiences.” - LitHub
“The buzz around her latest novel has drawn new attention to her back catalogue around the world,” and that’s obviously great for her, and her wider community. “In Australia, Indigenous people are often spoken for or about, but rarely listened to, she says.” - The Guardian (UK)
“Working as a lawyer taught me how much can turn on a single word. I was always too clumsy to actually be a scientist – I was awful at labs – but ... I care a lot about my writing being clear, accessible, and precise.” - Irish Times
BookTok, Science Fiction & Fantasy, and the indomitable Richard Osman led Fiction, with the category accounting for the year’s top five titles, 16 of the top 20 and 32 of the top 50. - The Bookseller
"Even as the platform gains influence, it raises questions: Is Substack empowering writers to build sustainable careers, or is it just the latest iteration of pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps optimism? Ironically or not, Substack itself thrives on this ouroboros-like discourse." - Quartz
"In (The Life of Herod the Great), Hurston looked to redefine the legacy of Herod, who reigned as king of Judaea from 37 BCE to 4 BCE. … Following Hurston's death, the unfinished manuscript sat in a trunk that was nearly consumed in a fire. Luckily, a neighbor intervened with a hose." - NPR
When considering writing as a function of the body, we face the work’s physical, irreplicable quality. Stories and poems can be shared, but voices cannot; languages can be shared, but consciousnesses cannot. Accepting a global literature, then, is to be inspired, instead of disturbed. - Asymptote Journal
“The longer the sequence of symbols, the more likely that writing is involved,” Schwartz said, distinguishing alphabetic writing from semasiography, which refers to “signs functioning as mnemonic devices to represent ideas but not language.” - Hyperallergic
Elon Musk. Jordan Peterson, Peter Thiel. All three have been repeatedly talking about and referring to — and misconstruing — The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Paradise Lost, and the like. - The Nation
