Words

Tom Carson: “Most of the Americans entranced by the fib that everything after high school is a fall from grace undoubtedly have no idea where it originated, but the Clearasil staining Mark Twain’s hands can never be wholly scrubbed away.” – The Baffler

Making lists of ideas, reading novels, scheduling time to sit down at your computer, researching new coffee shops at which to work, and establishing weekly word goals may seem like parts of writing, but they are not. They are procrastination, which, if you think about it, is actually writing in its purest form. – The New Yorker

“Books clubs are an indicator of a young generation that has come of age after 9/11. Many have liberal leanings and seek a space where they can talk openly. During the Taliban, Kabul University’s library was destroyed, but it has come back to life.” – The Guardian

“The full findings from the annual Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society report into author earnings … [reveal that,] while the average professional writer earns £10,000 a year, the mean earnings for a writer’s household were more than £81,000 a year, and median household earnings were at £50,000 per annum.” – The Guardian

The ousted chief of the chain, Demos Parneros, sued over his dismissal (as one does if one is a CEO), so B&N decided to countersue, demanding to claw back some of the CEO’s compensation and to be awarded damages for his behavior. The judge let the countersuit proceed, but ruled that the indemnity clause in Parneros’s contract applies even in this case. – Publishers Weekly

Is relentlessly sunny book “coverage” replacing honest book criticism, or merely supplementing it? Are listicles, Bookstagram, and literary Twitter nothing but treacly promotion puddles on the surfaces of which books can float unscrutinized and unchallenged; or are they in fact vibrant and necessary new arenas of discourse wherein previously silenced critical voices can finally be heard? Has the age of the algorithm truly killed the intellectually rigorous book review? – Bookmarks

“The idea behind the app” — PoemPortraits — “which was jointly conceived by artist and stage designer Es Devlin and the creative technologist Ross Goodwin, is for users to ‘donate’ a single word to an ongoing, collective poem. The word you enter will be integrated in a randomly, or rather, algorithmically-produced couplet based on a scanning of more than 20 million words of 19th-century poetry.” – Literary Hub

“In truth, freelance journalism, as a career, is mostly an anachronism. Given the rock-bottom rates on offer, few writers actually support themselves with full-time freelancing… But for most of us, freelance journalism is a monetized hobby, separate from whatever real income one earns. The ideal relationship for a freelance journalist to their work becomes a kind of excited amateurism.” – The New Republic

These books and classes seem to ask an underlying question: Is what the world is experiencing today a replay of the Nazis and Italian Fascists? Probably not. But the parallels these writers see are difficult to deny. Even Francis Fukuyama’s latest books have re-examined democracy in our current age. – Los Angeles Times

A study from Canada reveals undergraduates consider language learning to be a feminine pursuit, and that men with traditional beliefs about the proper roles of men and women report less interest in such study if their masculinity has been threatened. – Pacific Standard

“John Gardner, the literary critic, wrote that the job of the novelist is to create a ‘vivid and continuous dream’ for the reader, but I’d somehow developed a case of readerly sleep apnea. I’d gotten into the habit of consuming novels so fitfully that I was all but sealed off from their pleasures. It was as if I’d been watching movies in a special buffering-only mode, or listening to music through the world’s balkiest Bluetooth headphones. This style of reading had, I realized, shunted me into a vicious circle.” – The New York Times

Hoang’s first novel, The Kiss Quotient, had an autistic main character – and so does her second. She says, “There was this website I looked at — I don’t want to tell you what it is, because I don’t want to drive traffic there — but it, basically they say that autistic people are heartless, and that we don’t experience empathy, we are selfish and cold, and anyone who’s had a relationship could go on there and kind of air their grievances and say how horrible it was. And I’m sure that those situations exist, but I can’t accept that that’s a rule.” Hence, her wildly popular romances. – NPR

What a heartbreak her life was after To Kill a Mockingbird, and her attempted true-crime book turned out similarly: “Despite amassing more than enough Maxwelliana for a book, she could not get traction in the prose. That’s a common enough problem, of course; nothing writes itself, and no matter how many pages a reporting trip yields, the one that matters most always starts out blank. Everyone told Lee that the story she had found was destined to be a brilliant book. But no one could tell her how to write it.” – The Guardian (UK)

Poet Imtiaz Dharker had been tipped by several British news sources as the next poet laureate, following Carol Ann Duffy, but she said no: “I had to weigh the privacy I need to write poems against the demands of a public role. The poems won.” – The Guardian (UK)

Carmichael’s is the oldest independent bookstore in the city, and the founders just passed over the reins to their daughter and niece. How do you “modernize” a bookstore – or do you? – The New York Times

Bret Easton Ellis grants that almost no house would publish American Psycho today (he wouldn’t even want to write it today), and it’s hard to imagine any American publisher releasing Lolita in 2019 if it weren’t already famous. “[Yet] if Lolita is a scandalous novel about child abuse, why are A Little Life and My Absolute Darling, which are much more graphic, so much less so? Times have changed since 1955, of course, but the idea of the novel’s purpose has changed too.” – The Guardian

As Sarah Malley discovered while working at an independent bookshop, some routine practices legally qualified at least in her state) as wage theft. And it’s far more common for indie bookstore employees to skip vacation and sick days because they can’t afford to take them. “Does a business that can’t afford to pay its employees a living wage deserve to be in business? … I have no idea. I haven’t the faintest idea at all.” – Popula

A whole host of new Scrabble words relate to current lifestyle trends including plogging (picking up litter while jogging), sharenting (sharing news and images of one’s children on social media), babymoon (early period of new parenthood), dancecore (type of electronic dance music), zen (state of calm attentiveness), fleek (used in the phrase ‘on fleek’, stylish) and bizjet (small aeroplane used by business people). – Irish Times

We can learn much from the entrepreneurial community about the art of a good story. Great storytellers simplify. Richard Branson once said, “If your pitch can’t fit on the back of an envelope, it’s rubbish.” He is also the master at telling the warts and all story, compelling people to understand both his successes and failures, but most importantly to get his listeners invested in helping him solve his challenges. – Arts Professional

“We asked Mary Norris, The New Yorker‘s ‘comma queen,’ and … Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief of Random House, … about their love of editing, the mistakes people make, and whether or not this intro has too many commas. (It probably does, doesn’t it?)” – Literary Hub

The once-enormous market for popular crime novels in India’s most widely spoken language began falling off a cliff in the 1990s. Then Minakshi Thakur, an executive at HarperCollins India took on the challenge of bringing it back. – Verve (India)

You can learn basic grammar and vocabulary at any age. That explains my “good enough” French. But there’s also an enormous amount of low-frequency words and syntax that even native speakers might encounter only once a year. Knowing any one of these “occasional” words or phrasings isn’t essential. But in every context — a book, an article or conversation — there will probably be several. They’re part of what gives native speech its richness. – The New York Times

“Provost Persis Drell told the Faculty Senate Thursday that the university was ending that funding. She cited a tight budget ahead, due to a smaller than anticipated payout coming from the endowment. (The endowment is worth more than $26 billion and is the fourth largest in American higher education.)” – Inside Higher Ed

In 2015-16, just as new leaders were taking charge, the newspaper/website lost £57 million; three years later, operations are £8000,000 in the black — even as management has resisted instituting an online paywall. – BBC

“Baldwin has captured his own early lifetime of shame and filtered it through the alembic of [narrator] David’s own cave-journey. It is a solid shame, thick, heavy, cold, enveloping like a darkening star.” – Literary Hub

“The unfinished manuscript of [an essay collection titled] The Clockwork Condition was written by Burgess in 1972 and 1973, after Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of A Clockwork Orange was accused of inspiring copycat crimes, prompting the director to withdraw it from circulation.” – The Guardian

As anyone who’s read The Iliad knows, it’s about men being mad at each other and going to war. That results in some great writing, true, but there’s a lot more left to say about the cost of anger and war. “The novels compel us to look at that cost, not by a poignant glimpse to the side, as in the Iliad, but as their chief subject. As well they might: after all, slavery, massacres and rape remain real-world consequences of conflict and male aggression.” – The Guardian (UK)