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Books

Arts Science World

The Eeriness of the English Countryside

Why do all those rugged coastlines, moors and stone buildings make England seem haunted?

Robert Macfarlane The Guardian Apr 2015 15min Permalink

Arts

Jonathan Franzen's Big Book

Before The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen was just another literary novelist with a new book coming out.

Emily Eakin New York Times Magazine Sep 2001 15min Permalink

Arts Media Movies & TV

The Cousins Karamazov

David Simon and Richard Price, two of the greatest crime storytellers of our time, talk about their craft.

David Simon, Richard Price Guernica Apr 2015 25min Permalink

Arts Media

The Master Writer of the City

Joseph Mitchell used composites in his non-fiction, invented characters and added flourishes to his facts. Does it matter?

Janet Malcolm New York Review of Books Apr 2015 20min Permalink

Arts World

Stranger Still

Kamel Daoud’s celebrated retelling of Albert Camus’s The Stranger came within two votes of winning the Prix Goncourt. It has also made him a target of radical Islamists.

Adam Shatz New York Times Magazine Apr 2015 35min Permalink

Arts

Harper Lee’s Forgotten True-Crime Project

Many people hoped that this would be the second book she’d publish.

Casey Cep New Yorker Mar 2015 10min Permalink

Arts

Desperately Seeking Susan

Being friends with Susan Sontag was thrilling, but also “shot through in the end with mutual irritation.”

Terry Castle London Review of Books Mar 2005 20min Permalink

Arts

The Bizarre, Unsolved Mystery of "My Immortal," the World’s Worst Fanfiction Story

Academics are convinced it’s an intelligent satire.

Abraham Riesman New York Mar 2015 15min Permalink

Arts

Beloved Monster

The writer Alfred Chester, who died alone in a Jerusalem apartment in 1971 at just 37, was brilliant. He was also insane.

Blake Bailey Vice Mar 2008 15min Permalink

Arts Crime

Let Us Now Appraise Famous Writers

A correspondence school for writers turns out to be a sham. This piece forced it into bankruptcy.

Jessica Mitford The Atlantic Jul 1970 30min Permalink

Arts

To Shill a Mockingbird

A 58-year-old manuscript will become Harper Lee’s second novel, but questions about Lee’s care continue to swirl in Alabama.

Neely Tucker Washington Post Feb 2015 20min Permalink

Arts

On Sylvia Plath

She was not just a poet, she was an “event” in American literature all by herself.

Elizabeth Hardwick New York Review of Books Dec 1969 20min Permalink

Arts

You'll Never Write About Me Again

A journalist and documentarian charts over a decade of her relationship with Philip Roth.

Livia Manera Sambuy The Believer Jan 2015 20min Permalink

Arts

To Steal a Mockingbird?

How Harper Lee was duped into signing away the rights to To Kill a Mockingbird, which still sells 750,000 copies per year, and how she’s fighting to get them back.

Mark Seal Vanity Fair Jul 2013 30min Permalink

Arts

The Boy Who Didn't Come Back From Heaven: Inside A Bestseller's 'Deception'

Alex Malarkey co-wrote a bestselling book about a near-death experience. Last week he admitted he made it up. Why wasn’t anyone listening to a quadriplegic boy and a mother who simply wanted to tell the truth?

Michelle Dean The Guardian Jan 2015 15min Permalink

Arts

When a Stranger Threatens Suicide

An American writer living in Japan, unread and underpublished, sends an email to a group of writers he doesn’t know informing them that he is committing suicide.

Cynthia McCabe Washington Post Jan 2015 20min Permalink

Arts Media

The Definition of a Dictionary

Merriam-Webster is revising its most authoritative tome for the digital age. But in an era of twerking and trolling, what should a dictionary look like?

Stefan Fatsis Slate Jan 2015 45min Permalink

Arts Crime

My Life Under Armed Guard

Since exposing the Neapolitan mafia by publishing Gomorrah at age 27, Roberto Saviano has lived for nearly a decade under armed guard, shuttling between anonymous hotels and army barracks.

Roberto Saviano The Guardian Jan 2015 15min Permalink

Arts

The Art of Fiction No. 90: Robert Stone

An interview with the novelist, who died on Saturday.

Read more

“There’s only one subject for fiction or poetry or even a joke: how it is. In all the arts, the payoff is always the same: recognition. If it works, you say that’s real, that’s truth, that’s life, that’s the way things are. ‘There it is.’”

William C. Woods The Paris Review Nov 1985 35min Permalink

Arts

Scare Tactics

Michel Houellebecq on his controversial new novel, Submission, which imagines France electing its first Muslim president.

Sylvain Bourmeau The Paris Review Jan 2015 20min Permalink

Arts

The Mystery of Marsha Mehran

The best-selling young novelist lay dead in a trash-strewn cottage on Ireland’s rugged coast for over a week before she was discovered.

Cahal Milmo The Independent Jan 2015 10min Permalink

Reprints Arts Science

The Unbreakable Laura Hillenbrand

How the author writes best-selling non-fiction books without the ability to leave her house.

Wil S. Hylton New York Times Magazine Dec 2014 25min Permalink

Arts Religion

Some Girls Want Out

On spectacular saintliness, holy anorexia, and female hysteria.

Hilary Mantel London Review of Books Mar 2004 25min Permalink

Arts

The Walking Cure

On Cheryl Strayed and why Wild became a hit.

Kathryn Schulz New York Dec 2014 20min Permalink

Reprints Arts

The Secret Handshake

The short-lived literary career of Breece DʼJ Pancake and his roadmap to a world of oppressive poverty.

Samantha Hunt The Believer Oct 2005 15min Permalink

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