Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky in un'intervista inedita del 1987.

"I write little poems when I feel like it. Over the years it became my profession. What started out as a deviation became my occupation, and from there came discipline and routine. I trust inertia more than the creative impulse. Stravinsky said, “I do it for myself and my probable alter ego.” I think that every writing career starts as a personal quest for personal betterment. To achieve some kind of sainthood, to make yourself better than you are. You quickly notice that the pen operates more efficiently than the soul". tinhouse.

Book Tours

Adam Mansbach sui dolori dei book tours: "A lot can go wrong on a book tour. For instance ... nobody shows up to the reading. ...
This, however, is not even close to the worst thing than can happen. Far, far worse is when one to four people show up, speckling the 30 folding chairs the bookstore has arranged before the microphone and podium like survivors of some horrible plague.
Fuck it, you say – four or 400, you’re a professional and you’re going to do your job. You came all this way, and these kind souls bothered to show up. And hell, there’s a dozen other people browsing the aisles; maybe they’ll hear your voice and wander over one by one, intrigued.  ...
What actually happens is, the fourth person gathers up his stuff and walks out after you’ve read two pages, nearly breaking your fool heart. Some other random bozo does indeed wander over and take his place, but only because he needs a place to read the real estate broker’s licensing handbook ...
It’s also possible that the bookstore will go out of business in the middle of your reading. salon.

p.s. il nuovo libro di Adam Mansbach è Rage Is Back (Viking)

Marathon Readings

The marathon reading, a format of communal public performance that has more in common with the filibuster than the conventional literary reading, is growing in popularity in the age of the Internet, according to Kathryn Hohlwein, a professor emeritus at California State University. Ms. Hohlwein is the head of the Readers of Homer, a nonprofit group that has been putting on marathon readings of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" around the world since the 1990s ... wsj.

Justin Anthony Knapp e Wikipedia

Justin Anthony Knapp (born November 18, 1982) is an often-unemployed Wikipedia editor living in Indianapolis. He recently became the first person to make 1 million edits to the site. When the Speedway native posted his millionth edit to Wikipedia on April 15, 2012 - ironically, it was an update to his own user page quietly announcing the milestone to the Wiki community - it sat unnoticed for three days. Then an editor with the alias “Tony the Tiger” saw the post and wrote a public congratulatory note. A few others followed. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales came across it and named April 20 “Justin Knapp Day,” an honor he bestowed only three other times, to the site’s original programmers. indianapolismonthly.

Sulla lettura

The strange bliss of reading is mysterious even to those who are most susceptible to it. I’m not speaking here of the pleasures of learning, nor of those to be had from being drawn into an exciting story, but simply of the sensual delight of reading good writing, all by itself. ...
For me, the pleasure of reading is concentrated in the author’s conviction—a mind not my own making itself entirely intelligible, manifest, and articulate. Take me for a ride, as far away from myself as I can go—even to the place from which my whole soul will recoil; I want to know everything. Maria Bustillos, newyorker.

Lavorare alla New York Review of Books

Janet Coleman ci racconta gli anni dell'inizio alla New York Review of Books. "I arrived in December 1963, before the NYR had been on the newsstands a year. I was twenty-one. ... Through William Phillips and Phillip Rahv, the founding rabbis of the New York intellectual press, I also knew the work (and phone numbers) of the whole Upper West Side of critics newly prominent on the writing roster of the NYR.
From Rahv, the more admired of the partners (Saul Bellow called Phillips a “devious rat”), I’d learned the most important factor in producing our line of work. “Philip,” I’d asked, “What’s the key to great critical writing?” “Sensibility, Janet,” he said. You would never guess from his jackknife prose that Philip Rahv spoke like a Russian bear schooled at City College for a Group Theater production of a Chekhov play. “Sensabitty, Janet,” was what he actually said. “Sensabitty.” nybooks.

Sabbath's Theater

Sabbath's Theater è il romanzo che Philip Roth preferisce, tra quelli da lui scritti. Assieme ad American Pastoral. "I think it's got a lot of freedom in it," he said of Sabbath's Theater. "That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader." guardian.

L'universo twitter entra in biblioteca

"... the Library of Congress is now stockpiling the entire Twitterverse, or Tweetosphere, or whatever we’ll end up calling it—anyway, the corpus of all public tweets. ...
This is an ocean of ephemera. A library of Babel. No one is under any illusions about the likely quality—seriousness, veracity, originality, wisdom—of any one tweet. The library will take the bad with the good: the rumors and lies, the prattle, puns, hoots, jeers, bluster, invective, bawdy probes, vile gossip, epigrams, anagrams, quips and jibes, hearsay and tittle-tattle, pleading, chicanery, jabbering, quibbling, block writing and ASCII art, self-promotion and humblebragging, grandiloquence and stultiloquence". nybooks. 

Libri in uscita nel 2013

Jamaica Kincaid

The Millions presenta, mese per mese, i libri in uscita negli USA nel 2013. "... this year we’ll get our hands on new George Saunders, Karen Russell, Jamaica Kincaid, Anne Carson, Colum McCann, Aleksandar Hemon and even Vladimir Nabokov and J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as, beyond the horizon of summer, new Paul Harding, Jonathan Lethem, and Thomas Pynchon". themillions.

Leggere il romanzo di un amico

Leggere il romanzo di un amico può essere imbarazzante. Ecco quel che dice Brad Leithauser in proposito: "Of course, it’s an uneasy business, reading a friend’s book. That’s true regardless of the book’s genre, whether nonfiction or poetry or short stories. But I think it’s especially true of novels. “I can’t wait to read it,” you declare. Meanwhile, a private voice—speaking in that tone of wry resignation so common to inner voices prohibited from public utterance—is reasonably asking, “Hey, hold on a minute, what if I hate it?” newyorker.

Sabbath's Theater

Tra i suoi romanzi, Sabbath's Theater (assieme ad American Pastoral), è il preferito di Philip Roth. 
"I think it's got a lot of freedom in it," he said of Sabbath's Theater. "That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader." guardian.

Dan Chiasson su David Ferry e Orazio

Ferry’s translations of Horace are among the predominant texts in contemporary American poetry, teaching American poets (I’m one of them) the Horatian tones—the modesty, civility, and gossip; the swift, fly-by urbanity—that went missing from much of the best American poetry of the seventies and eighties. How strange to have the American vernacular put back in our mouths by this roundabout method. newyorker.

Com'era lavorare alla New York Review of Books

Il primo numero della NYR

Ce lo racconta Janet Coleman, che ci lavorò dal 1963 al 1966, i primi anni della rivista fondata da Robert Silvers e Barbara Epstein. 
"I arrived in December 1963, before the NYR had been on the newsstands a year. I was twenty-one. I’d had a similar job at the legendary literary and left-wing political quarterly Partisan Review, entering and updating subscriptions, all hundreds of them, on 3x5” index cards. Through William Phillips and Phillip Rahv, the founding rabbis of the New York intellectual press, I also knew the work (and phone numbers) of the whole Upper West Side of critics newly prominent on the writing roster of the NYR.
From Rahv, the more admired of the partners (Saul Bellow called Phillips a “devious rat”), I’d learned the most important factor in producing our line of work. “Philip,” I’d asked, “What’s the key to great critical writing?” “Sensibility, Janet,” he said. You would never guess from his jackknife prose that Philip Rahv spoke like a Russian bear schooled at City College for a Group Theater production of a Chekhov play. “Sensabitty, Janet,” was what he actually said. “Sensabitty.” nybooks.

La riscossa dei libri

Despite the growth of e-readers and digital technology, New Yorkers are spending more time in libraries than ever.

That's according to a new report out today from the Center for an Urban Future about the changing role of our city’s public libraries in the digital age. wnyc.

Lovers of ink and paper, take heart. Reports of the death of the printed book may be exaggerated. ... Half a decade into the e-book revolution, though, the prognosis for traditional books is suddenly looking brighter. Hardcover books are displaying surprising resiliency. The growth in e-book sales is slowing markedly. And purchases of e-readers are actually shrinking, as consumers opt instead for multipurpose tablets. It may be that e-books, rather than replacing printed books, will ultimately serve a role more like that of audio books—a complement to traditional reading, not a substitute. wsj.

How Books Were Made

In 1947

How I Get To Write

In the morning, I don’t talk to anyone, nor do I think about certain things.
I try to stay within certain confines. I imagine this as a narrow, shadowy corridor with dim bare walls. I’m moving down this corridor, getting to the place where I can write.
I brush my teeth, get dressed, make the bed. I avoid conversation, as my husband knows. I am not yet in the world, and there is a certain risk involved in talking: the night spins a fine membrane, like the film inside an eggshell. It seals you off from the world, but it’s fragile, easily pierced. ... Roxana Robinson, newyorker.

Il nuovo romanzo di Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon sta scrivendo un nuovo romanzo. Così riporta il suo editore. "The secretive novelist Thomas Pynchon is back. He will publish a new book, titled “The Bleeding Edge,” his long-time publisher, Penguin Press, said. No publication date has been set". nyt.

The Revolution Was Televised

The Revolution Was Televised è il titolo del libro di Alan Sepinwall sulla storia della televisione (sottotitolo, The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever). Dapprima auto-pubblicato, è stato ora comprato da Simon & Schuster. "In the course of chronicling the modern-day history of television, the author Alan Sepinwall has made a bit of history himself, becoming the rare self-published author to be picked up by a major press. On Wednesday, it was announced that the Touchstone imprint of Simon & Schuster had acquired his well-regarded book “The Revolution Was Televised,” which Mr. Sepinwall put out late last year". nyt.

Le donne delle sitcom

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Elaine Blair offre un'interessante analisi delle donne delle sitcom, che tendono a essere single.
"The Mary Tyler Moore Show was the first to make a subject out of a single woman’s romantic life. Moore’s character, Mary Richards, was thirty and didn’t have a steady boyfriend. She was initially going to be a divorcee, but the head of CBS programming balked at the idea. ...  Instead, Mary Richards became someone who was just ending a long-term relationship with a live-in boyfriend. To Burns and his co-creators, there was an exciting realism and urgency in

the idea that people have these long affairs with the man or woman they think will be the love of their life, and it turns out not to be, and they end up alone again, which became the overriding issue, I think, on the show. This woman who finds that she’s not alone, that she’s got this family of people whom she works with.

The idea of being not-alone even when your relationships and dates end in shambles—this would become not only the overriding issue of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but of pretty much every subsequent sitcom about single characters". nybooks.

Narcissism vs Self-Esteem

Secondo un recente sondaggio la grande sicurezza in sé che dimostrano gli studenti universitari americani tende verso il narcisismo e non è affatto una qualità positiva nei confronti del loro futuro lavorativo.
"In The Narcissism Epidemic (Free Press), co-written with Keith Campbell, Jean Twenge blames the growth of narcissistic attitudes on a range of trends - including parenting styles, celebrity culture, social media and access to easy credit, which allows people to appear more successful than they are.
"What's really become prevalent over the last two decades is the idea that being highly self-confident - loving yourself, believing in yourself - is the key to success.
"Now the interesting thing about that belief is it's widely held, it's very deeply held, and it's also untrue." bbc.

Hashtag

Hashtag è la parola dell'anno 2012, secondo l'American Dialect Society. "Hashtag refers to the practice used on Twitter for marking topics or making commentary by means of a hash symbol (#) followed by a word or phrase.
“This was the year when the hashtag became a ubiquitous phenomenon in online talk,” Zimmer [chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society] said. “In the Twittersphere and elsewhere, hashtags have created instant social trends, spreading bite-sized viral messages on topics ranging from politics to pop culture.” americandialect.