Lead Igloo | Stories, Philosophy, Opinion
Public Library 5.3
Carved up, or kindly cut? James Ley on Raymond Carver and the writer-editor relationship. Via The Australian.
Publishing: The revolutionary future. Jason Epstein on the revolution that is here. Via New York Review of Books
Thinkwriting about Don DeLillo. On DeLillo, writer and lover of language. By Darragh McManus and via The Guardian
The Acre. Great nonfiction by [...]
Public Library 12.02
The Chess Master and the Computer. Garry Kasparov on the history of the chess player’s nemesis, the chess computer. Via New York Review of Books.
Pound’s Collected Poetry Recordings. PennSound’s complete collection of Ezra Pound recordings. Includes a good interview with Richard Sieburth, the page’s editor.
A nation of racist dwarfs. “Kim Jong-il’s regime is even weirder [...]
Public Library 1.02
Naomi Klein on how corporate branding has taken over America. Extract from the 10th Anniversary Edition of No Logo examining the branding of everything American – including Barack Obama. Great read. Via The Guardian.
Our Boredom, Ourselves. Jennifer Schuesller on how boredom is woven into the very fabric of the literary enterprise. Via The New York [...]
Public Library 20.1
The Pictures of War you Aren’t Supposed to See. Striking article by Chris Hedges about the impersonality of ‘industrial war’ (great term) and two new books of war photographs that tell a very different story to the media and Hollywood’s “mythic visions of war [which] keep it heroic and entertaining.” Via truth dig.
The Real Question. [...]
Public Library 17.12
Ubu Editions publishes the unpublishable. Invited authors were asked what makes something unpublishable, these are their responses. Works range ”from an 1018-page manuscript (unpublishable due to its length) to a volume of romantic high school poems written by a now-respected innovative poet.”
The intelligence factory: How America makes its enemies disappear. The story of Aafia Siddiqui and the disappearing [...]
Public Library 11.12
James Wood’s best books of 2009. Via The New Yorker.
Cate Kennedy on how to end a short story. Via ABC.
All That, an extract from The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Also via The New Yorker.
Simon Winchester on Georges Perec. Via OUP blog.
Amazon to sell short stories for the Kindle. I can’t see this as [...]
Public Library 4.12
Today’s addition to the library involves a brief look at some of the blogs that are keeping me occupied and away from what I should be doing – in a good way.
Adam Curtis blog at BBC
The strength of this blog lies in its research. Adam Curtis is a documentary maker – currently, his focus is [...]
Public Library 27.11
Zadie Smith on the rise of the essay. “In the first place, “well-made novel” seems to me to be a kind of Platonic bogeyman, existing everywhere in an ideal realm but in few spots on this earth.” Excellent essay on the similarities and differences between the essay and the novel. From The Guardian.
Midnight in Dostoevsky. [...]
Public Library 20.11
Kabul: City Number One – Part 5 – Intercontinental. Part five of Adam Curtis’s series on Afghanistan expands on the (failed) westernisation of Afghanistan.
The Robert Louis Stevenson Website. Includes all RLS’s written works.
Michael Wood on Roland Barthes. A retrospective look at the French literary theorist/philospher/semiotician in the context of two new releases by him. From the [...]
Public Library 13.11
Borges on the Couch by David Foster Wallace. One of my favourite authors reviews the biography of my other favourite author – and nails it. From the NY Times.
In Retreat. Malcolm Knox on the future of gentlemen’s clubs, from The Monthly.
‘We Like Lists Because We Don’t Want to Die’. Umberto Eco interviewed in Spiegel Online.
T.S. [...]