Reminder: CAAF and Stephany take over this week
We at MaudNewton.com have been enjoying a restorative break from this site and the Internet in general. We have avoided the newspapers. We have read books, written some things for pay, watched the first six episodes of The Office, fed a friend’s cat and said goodbye to another friend who’s moving to the [...]
Travel
Here’s one more snippet from Cronopios and Famas and then it’s AULENBACK OUT until next week.
Okay, to the Cortázar:
When famas go on a trip, when they pass the night in a city, their procedure is the following: one fama goes to the hotel and prudently checks the prices, the quality of the sheets, and the [...]
Helen DeWitt okay
Helen DeWitt, author of The Last Samurai, once was lost but now she’s found.
Slipping-Down Life
Ann Tyler is pleased with the movie they’ve made of her novel A Slipping-Down Life.
Asked if the phrase “Hollywood would like to buy your book” was something she dreaded, the author said, “I long ago stopped imagining that a movie made from a book — mine or anyone else’s — would be the book itself [...]
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
My wife bursts into the room
where I’m writing well
of my love for her
and because now
the poem is lost
I silently curse her.
Alden Nowlan.
Other poems by Alden Nowlan: A Mysterious Naked Man. A Poem About Miracles. A few more.
Notes on Notes from Underground
On Salon, Allan Barra compares Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s new translation of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground to Jessie Coulson’s 1970s translation. Unfortunately, you have to watch an ad for the movie Saved in order to read the article. So once you’re in there, you might as well read Stephanie Zacharek’s review of said movie. [...]
Tolkien chat
The Chronicle of Higher Education will host an online chat on the topic of Tolkien scholarship on Thursday, June 3, at 12 noon, U.S. Eastern time.
The work of J.R.R. Tolkien thrives on college campuses — and not just among students watching The Lord of the Rings on DVD. A marginalized but prolific scholarly industry has [...]
3rd Bed Needs Money
From an email I just received from 3rd bed:
To help facilitate donations we have created the following designations:
3rd bed as a homeless panhandler or a lemonade stand: $1-$10
3rd bed as a gram of pot or some cheese at Whole Foods: $10-$50
3rd bed as a scalped ticket to see Madonna or The Darkness: $50-$500
3rd bed as [...]
Interview Round-up
Robert Birnbaum interviews Ben Jones, author of The Rope Eater:
RB: How is this activity of going out and talking about and talking up your book?
BJ: I’ve loved it. It’s been great. Writing is such an isolated process and you’re sitting and you are making all these choices you imagine people are going to be interested [...]
Me, Me, and More Me
Dan Chaon’s new novel You Remind Me of Me is favourably reviewed in the Times.
Chaon’s short story Big Me is one of my favourites.
IN THE SPRING of my twelfth year, a man moved into a house at the end of my block. The house had belonged to an old woman who had died and [...]
Still More Beckett for Babies
The mock-up of the Beckett for Babies board book is almost finished. I’d like to thank all you lovely people out there in the internetland who emailed — or even snailmailed! — hilarious photographs of your very attractive but discontented offspring to us. That said, we’re still looking for the perfect photograph (preferably two or [...]
Instructions on How to Cry
Putting the reasons for crying aside for the moment, we might concentrate on the correct way to cry, which, be it understood, means a weeping that doesn’t turn into a big commotion nor proves an affront to the smile with its parallel and dull similarity. The average, everyday weeping consists of a general contraction of [...]
Because books aren’t always enough
Listmania! The Top Weirdest Items You Can Purchase Through Amazon! Get your Skunk Scent, your Bird Grub, your Human Torso, your Sea Monkeys Executive Set, your Owl Poo and your Sugar-Free Milk Chocolate Dipped Pork Rinds here! Via Pop Culture Junk Mail.
If on a winter’s night you reread a novel you once loved
David Mitchell rereads Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler.
Re-reading a novel you loved is like revisiting a city where you loved: you do it in the company of your younger self. You may not get on with your younger self, or else the absence of what is missing colours your judgment. Despite [...]
Good Morning!
This week a couple of clueless articles having to do with a startling new phenomenon called blogging* appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times. I have a suggestion for the editors of these venerable old media institutions. Perhaps next week they could publish articles announcing that there are these things called [...]
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