Posts by author
Michelle Dean
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Keeping Abreast of the Issues of the Day
This essaylet by Jill Lepore at The New Yorker about this week’s “scandalous” TIME cover gives the history of people losing their minds over the depiction of breasts and breastfeeding and birth and all that stuff in — trigger warning for…
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Is Optimism About the Future of “Serious” Publishing Possible?
In the kind of defeated sigh about the future of books that is increasingly commonplace, Sarah Weinman, the news editor at Publisher’s Marketplace, argues that in the digital age there’s no room for “serious nonfiction.” The gist of her argument…
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“Novelistic Intelligence” and the Obama Biography
The best thing I read this week was James Wood’s review of Hilary Mantel’s new novel, Bring Up the Bodies, a sequel to her last novel, Wolf Hall. Caveat emptor: Though I have not read Bring Up the Bodies yet, I…
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Literary Roommates
I was sniffing around a rumor I’d heard about Saul Bellow and happened to come across this wonderful piece Bellow wrote about the time he and Ralph Ellison were roommates in a big old rambling mansion in upstate New York.…
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Saturday I-Have-to-Bail-But-Here-Are-Fun-Old-Things-To-Read Link Roundup
Today I am posting regretfully little because I am on deadline. The deadline is not my own; it’s someone else’s. I’ve been helping with a book for a while. Some day, when I’m allowed to, I might tell you which…
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Saturday Old Reads: Lady Journalists Edition
I thought I’d write an essay for you today but naturally it’s not done because my allergies are clogging the old brain-machine. Besides you all probably want to read subjects that are not simply my inner monologue. A couple of…
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Zen and the Art of Pencil-Sharpening
I saw David Rees read once. The event was about politics; it was to introduce a political book whose title I have regrettably forgotten. (I went to support another friend.) I’d never heard of Rees before but he made an…
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Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso: In Which Heckling Is An Integral Part of Poetry Reading
The 92nd St Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, an institution of which I have never taken nearly enough advantage, occasionally posts recordings of its old readings. A couple of days ago, they posted this one, of Allen Ginsberg reading a number…
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Saturday History Lesson: Flannery O’Connor and Betty Hester
Most people writing to their favorite authors do not, I’d guess, think they will get an answer back, and perhaps Betty Hester didn’t either.
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The Sedaris Reading Diet
I’m pretty sure my favourite part about this interview with David Sedaris is the writer he’d most like to meet: “[I]f I could go back in time, I’d love to collect kindling or iron a few shirts for Flannery O’Connor.…
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A Note About a Mundane Note from George Eliot
This week the Persephone Post has been putting up little scraps of signatures and letters from one of its staff member’s grandmothers-in-law. One of those scraps is a letter from George Eliot declining an invitation to collaborate on a stage…
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Overlooked Movies For Saturday Introverts: Higher Ground
The actress Vera Farmiga, whom you may know from Up in the Air or, possibly, the great guilty-pleasure of 2009, The Orphan, directed a movie called Higher Ground, which came out last year. It may or may not have pinged…