Other
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Maybe you’ve already seen this, but dang if this amphibious ice cream truck isn’t the best thing of the week. Also, in England, the benches sound like Alan de Botton. Don’t mess with Truman’s daughter. For that matter, don’t mess…
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Lying Artists
Artists and certain brain damage patients have overlapping tendencies—lying or “chronic confabulation,” in neuroscience vernacular. The difference is in that writers fabricate experiences and consciously control their associations whereas people who have incurred frontal lobe damage may be unable to…
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Brush Up on Your Literary Feuds
Whitehead v. Ford Egan v. Weiner Rushdie v. Updike Writers duel with their words, though sometimes there’s spit involved. Flavorwire has a list of 10 notorious literary spats.
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‘To a Restless Little Brother’
“You may not understand this now, but she isn’t coming back. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Day after that. And no, she hasn’t left anything behind — a sticky note on the refrigerator door or a quick message for the answering…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Welcome to the known world, deepest living thing! Let’s talk about profanity in the New Yorker. Fact: there are some very large numbers in the world. Coming soon: actual useful jetpacks.
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Am I the only person who thinks falconry is fascinating? I probably shouldn’t be linking to Polaroids from the set of Blade Runner, but I am going to. By the way, Eternal Sunshine is totally coming scientifically true. Submarine insignia…
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Magazine Review #6: Paris Review, Issue 196
The most important—and surprising—thing about this issue of The Paris Review: Roberto Bolaño’s lost novel. This is very exciting for fans of the Chilean writer (I happen to be a somewhat obsessive one) and even more so because The Paris…
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Franzian Guidance
Jonathan Franzen dispensed some optimistic guidance in a NY Times Op-Ed essay, an adaptation of his recent commencement speech to Kenyon graduates. He covers techno-consumerism, the environmentalist anger that once confined him to his room and his bird-watching revelation that…
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FUNNY WOMEN #53: An Editors’ Slush-Pile Meeting at the Backdoor Review
At Backdoor Review, we receive tens of thousands of submissions. We’ve collected a few cover letters and reprinted them now (without permission) with manuscript comments from our editors in italics.
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Swearing Firsts in the New Yorker
The New Yorker’s history of expletive usage and pioneering is recounted by the Awl in list-form. Times have changed, along with the editors at the New Yorker and this in turn, has changed how often profanity appears in the magazine.…
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Women in Sci Fi
The Guardian researches why the female presence seems to be diminishing in science fiction writing. Though there isn’t necessarily a shortage of female authors (or women publishers), there is a serious lack of female presence in the Guardian’s list of…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Today is a good day for tumblrs (if you enjoy scientific illustrations or old children’s books). The answer is Gliese 581d! Let us now consider Texas State Fairs from the 80s and 50s. And hey, why not, let’s all look…