Iris Blasi

"Memoir’s not an easy form. It’s not for beginners, which is unfortunate, as it is where many people..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:34:15 -0400

“Memoir’s not an easy form. It’s not for beginners, which is unfortunate, as it is where many people do begin.Memoir’s not an easy form. It’s not for beginners, which is unfortunate, as it is where many people do begin.”

- Hilary Mantel, to The New York Times

"A curious book, a mystical, glamourous story of today. It takes a deeper cut at life than hitherto..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:24:15 -0400

“A curious book, a mystical, glamourous story of today. It takes a deeper cut at life than hitherto has been enjoyed by Mr. Fitzgerald. He writes well-he always has-for he writes naturally, and his sense of form is becoming perfected.”

- The original 1925 NYT review of The Great Gatsby.

I love you, bookternet.

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:43:09 -0400

I love you, bookternet.

A really great Gatsby clutch.

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:19:28 -0400

A really great Gatsby clutch.

Cheers. popchartlab: Don Draper’s Old Fashioned, The Dude’s...

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:48:38 -0400

Cheers.

popchartlab:

Don Draper’s Old Fashioned, The Dude’s White Russian, Hunter S. Thompson’s Singapore Sling, Daisy Buchanan’s Mint Julep, and more in our new Cocktail Chart of Film and Literature.

F. Scott Fitzgerald dressed in drag in 1916 for the Princeton...

Fri, 10 May 2013 07:46:00 -0400

F. Scott Fitzgerald dressed in drag in 1916 for the Princeton Triangle Club, the country’s oldest touring collegiate musical comedy troupe.

(To this day, despite a co-ed cast, Triangle still features an all-male kickline, which is something simultaneously terrible and amazing to watch. Here’s the “Touched By An Angel” number from 2000.)

[picture via Open Culture]

How Baz Luhrmann began working on Gatsby: He first got the idea years ago, he added, after...

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:11:00 -0400

How Baz Luhrmann began working on Gatsby:

He first got the idea years ago, he added, after finishing ‘Moulin Rouge.’ As was his custom, he wanted to decompress by taking a trip, so he booked himself a passage on a trans-Siberian Express. …

“It was a tin box,” Mr. Luhrmann admitted. “But I took along two bottles of Australian red wine and an iPod with two recorded books. One of them was ‘The Great Gatsby.’ The first night, I opened the red wine, kicked up the air-conditioning and got in bed and started listening. The next day I couldn’t wait for nighttime, so I could hear the rest of it.

“You could actually recommend this as therapy to someone who was really in trouble: Get in a tin box, travel through Siberia, listen to ‘The Great Gatsby’ and drink red wine till you’re drunk.”

This sounds like my ideal vacation.

(via NYT)

"The propensity toward quoting at great length reveals Malcolm’s patience and unnervingly focused..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:00:50 -0400

“The propensity toward quoting at great length reveals Malcolm’s patience and unnervingly focused attention, but the second tendency—that habit of alluding to everything from poststructuralist texts to minor Henry James novels to Italian operas—demonstrates an even more impressive skill. Somehow, against all odds, Malcolm’s erudition is not alienating. Reading even the most cerebral of her sentences, you feel smart by association rather than dumb by comparison. No doubt this indirect flattery comes into play when she interviews someone, too. A person who is made to feel stupid is probably unlikely to tell you much.”

- from “I Read Everything Everything Janet Malcolm Ever Published,” in Slate

A good storyteller — and R. B. Chesterton is quite a good storyteller — knows to lower her voice...

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:37:55 -0400

A good storyteller — and R. B. Chesterton is quite a good storyteller — knows to lower her voice when she’s talking about ghosts. This author (who writes cozy mysteries under her real name, Carolyn Haines) reaches into the grave for the sepulchral tone in which she narrates THE DARKLING (Pegasus Crime), a moody tale about a sad town that comes to grief trying to relive its glittering past. During the 1940s, movie stars flocked to Coden, Ala., “where pleasure and vice could be indulged” in peace and for a price at the Paradise Inn. But by 1974, the pretty people are gone, the hotel is boarded up, and the locals have linked their dreams for the town’s rebirth to the Hendersons, a golden couple with three golden children. Having restored a grand house and raised hopes they might rescue the Paradise Inn, these California transplants spread more sunshine by taking in a homeless teenager and hiring a live-in tutor. That’s how Marie Bosarge (“You can call me Mimi”), the 21-year-old narrator, comes to witness the mysterious events in this spellbinding tale, offering eloquent evidence that Southern storytelling is indeed a very special art form.

Marilyn Stasio, in this weekend’s New York Times Book Review.

David Bowie in an ad for America’s Libraries. Because all...

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:35:00 -0400

David Bowie in an ad for America’s Libraries.

Because all the cool kids read books.

via

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s personal financial ledger is now...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:52:48 -0400

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s personal financial ledger is now available online, including categories such as “Money Earned by Writing since Leaving the Army” and “Zelda’s Earnings.”

Among the revelations: Fitzgerald was a terrible speller, he was equally bad at arithmetic, and he earned less than $2000 for the original publication of Gatsby.

(via)

“Writing is hard for every last one of us… . Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:46 -0400

“Writing is hard for every last one of us… . Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.” -Cheryl Strayed

Simon’s Cat has a new friend who is half the size and double the...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:06:28 -0400

Simon’s Cat has a new friend who is half the size and double the trouble.

Want more? Check out Simon’s Cat in Kitten Chaos, now in ebook.

"What you read is important, but not all important. How you read is the main consideration. For if..."

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 23:45:00 -0400

“

What you read is important, but not all important. How you read is the main consideration. For if you know how to read, there’s a world of education even in the newspapers, the magazines, on a single billboard or a stray advertising dodger.

The secret of good reading is this: read critically!

”

- Timeless wisdom from 75+ years ago: How to acquire knowledge. (via explore-blog)

From Fay Weldon’s Down Among the Women

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:10:04 -0400

From Fay Weldon’s Down Among the Women

powells: harperperennial: By Literary Tourist My new diet,...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:09:00 -0400

powells:

harperperennial:

By Literary Tourist

My new diet, you guys.

Every day.

Books — they do a body good.

The only thing better than pictures of Marilyn reading is...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:09:37 -0400

The only thing better than pictures of Marilyn reading is reading about Marilyn.

Read Gloria Steinem’s take on the blonde bombshell in MARILYN.

The Greatest Literary Lyric in the History of Musical Theater

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:41:00 -0400

I dreamed of writing like the high and mighty.
Now I’m the subject of a bidding war.
I met my personal Aphrodite.
I’m doing things I never dreamed of before.

We start to take the next step together.
Found an apartment on Seventy-Third.
The Atlantic Monthly’s printing my first chapter —
Two thousand bucks without rewriting one word.

I left Columbia and I don’t regret it.
I wrote a book and Sonny Mehta read it.
My heart’s been stolen.
My ego’s swollen.
I just keep rollin’ along.

From “Moving Too Fast” in Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last Five Years”

Listen here.

A little life advice from Lydia Lunch’s story “Ghost Town” in...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:22:00 -0400

A little life advice from Lydia Lunch’s story “Ghost Town” in the addictive anthology “The Heroin Chronicles.”

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:26:00 -0400

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” —Marilyn Monroe

Gloria Steinem on Marilyn Monroe is Marilyn like you’ve never seen her before.