Category: words

So what makes a good literary hoax? Well the world needs to be sucked into believing it of course. And that means of course that you don’t know the fraud until the deception has been revealed. Tragedy (usually for the hoaxer) ensues. Is there a common thread through these examples? – The New York Times

The books are startlingly intimate, exploring things he felt he couldn’t convey in film. “In order to go back to the beginning, to explore with such startling intimacy the archetype of all those other women, this great artist has to find a new mode of expression—one that was, so to speak, neither wife nor mistress. A virgin medium.” – New York Review of Books

Richard North Patterson: “The aim of the novelist is to enlist others in his fantasies, immersing them in an alternative reality so emotionally compelling that they willingly suspend disbelief. Trump has dangerously conflated this sort of storytelling with real-life presidential leadership, casting himself in the role of the archetypal savior-hero, battling the forces of evil. He’s our first novelist in chief.” – The Atlantic

Landon has been labeled “the female Byron” and “the Sappho of a polished age.” But the public figure she probably most closely resembles is Britney Spears. The two had the same gimmick: Entice your audience by straddling the line between virgin and whore. – Pacific Standard

First of all, she has a daily podcast called The Slowdown (which honestly sounds perfect for a poet). She says that poems “remind us of what we feel. They bring language that may not have existed for us before that can be applied to … what’s going on inside. I also really like the way that when you read a poem with someone else, those feelings and thoughts become part of a conversation. And so, in my mind, poems are really great at bringing us into what feels like a real and meaningful kind of engagement with other people.” – NPR

Cookbooks not only didn’t die, but one in the UK is selling as fast as J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown. What? “The future that Leith and Smith feared – where we do all our cooking from online searches on our tablets – simply hasn’t materialised. Or at least hasn’t caught on to anything like the scale of the apocalyptic projections. Many of us simply love cooking from cookbooks and, even in the Marie Kondo age, don’t want to give them up.” – The Observer (UK)

Or at least that’s the claim a book editor is making: “In publishing circles, you often hear the phrase ‘I put up with it because I love my job so much’ – we accept the shortcomings and remind ourselves to be grateful for the privilege of working in an industry so seemingly fragile. However, contrary to popular belief, the industry is not at risk of dying – far from it.” – The Guardian (UK)

Award-winning British poet Kate Clanchy has been a teacher for 30 years, and she’s made some pretty big changes in her current school. “We keep winning poetry prizes at national level, which is great for everyone. We have built up a culture of success and confidence around poetry. Normally, the head boy of a school would be captain of the rugby team but our head boy, Mukahang Limbu, is captain of the poetry team.” – The Observer (UK)