“Writers Group, as it’s known in the community, is a space for the homeless writers of downtown Boston (“homeless, transitional, or recently housed” is the rubric), and we meet every Tuesday morning at 9:30, in the basement of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul on Tremont Street. Out of Writers Group comes The Pilgrim, a literary magazine that I’ve been editing for the last five years. Large chunks of The Pilgrim are summoned into being, conjured from the chaos-state of potentiality, by Robert’s magic coffee.”
Category: words
Shakespeare’s Special Place In America
“The great modern nations boast great writers who depict and define the national life and character: Victor Hugo for the French, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for the Germans, Leo Tolstoy the Russians, Herman Melville and Mark Twain the Americans, and Shakespeare the English. Of course their greatness is hardly confined to their parochial impact: They are masters for all time and every place. And even among these titans an order of rank is observed, as a true aristocracy requires, and it is Shakespeare who ranks supreme.”
After Trump’s CIA Visit, Lookups Of The Word ‘Claque’ Spiked
As Merriam-Webster observes, “Claque means ‘a group hired to applaud at a performance’ or ‘a group of sycophants.'”
‘Alternative Facts’ Is The Perfect Euphemism For The Age Of Trump
Katy Waldman: “For one thing, the phrase calls to mind the snake-oil salesmanship that has animated Trump’s rise to power.” (Waldman cites the ’70s term alternative medicine.) ” The modifier’s connotation of gutsy, even glamorous independence also lends credibility to the rogue alt-right … Most of all, alternative facts evokes a total alienation from – and disinterest in – objective truth.”
Sales Of Orwell’s “1984” Surge After Conway’s “Alternative Facts”
“Sales of George Orwell’s dystopian drama 1984 have soared after Kellyanne Conway, adviser to the reality-TV-star-turned-president, Donald Trump, used the phrase “alternative facts” in an interview. As of Tuesday, the book was the sixth best-selling book on Amazon.”
E-Book Sales Are Falling
“Nielsen found that e-book unit sales from reporting publishers were down 16% in 2016 from 2015. Units fell the most in the juvenile fiction segment, where e-book sales dropped 28% in the year and accounted for 10% of total category unit sales in 2016, down from 14%. (E-books have never been a big factor in juvenile nonfiction and accounted for 1% of units sold in 2016.)”
Mark Twain’s Only Surviving Fairytale To Be Published
The author is known to have made up, on the spot, many bedtime stories for his young daughters, but written notes have only ever been found (and may only have been made) for one – “The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine.”
Sydney Morning Herald And Melbourne’s The Age Will Stop Printing Weekday Papers, Says Analyst
An Australian analyst for Credit Suisse tells The Australian (a national daily owned by a rival, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.) says he expects Fairfax Media, owner of the Herald and The Age, to “formally outline its plans for a move to a digital only weekday model for the metro titles.”
Owner Says Sydney Morning Herald And Melbourne’s The Age Will Keep Printing ‘For Some Years Into The Future’
While Fairfax Media has indicated in the past that ending print runs of weekday papers could be part of a long-term strategy, a spokesman for the chain said that “We have no plans to change from daily printing and we expect that to be the case for some years into the future.”
Why Brazil’s Greatest Writer Gave Up Writing
Raduan Nassar was forty-eight and at the height of his literary fame when, in 1984, he gave an interview with Folha de São Paulo, the country’s biggest daily newspaper, in which he announced his retirement. He wanted to become a farmer. “My mind is lit up with other things now; I’m looking into agriculture and stockbreeding,” he told the interviewer. Many were baffled.