Rachel Mennies

Tom Gauld’s blog is a most wonderful blog, and you should...

Wed, 30 May 2012 09:54:43 -0400

Tom Gauld’s blog is a most wonderful blog, and you should follow it.

"Digital content delivery not only places user privacy at risk; it can facilitate censorship and..."

Wed, 30 May 2012 08:34:57 -0400

“Digital content delivery not only places user privacy at risk; it can facilitate censorship and jeopardize access.”

- A Digital Dilemma: Ebooks and Users’ Rights | American Libraries Magazine (via infoneer-pulse)

vintageanchor: Congratulations to the Strand Bookstore (New...

Wed, 30 May 2012 08:32:26 -0400

vintageanchor:

Congratulations to the Strand Bookstore (New York, NY), which is celebrating its 85th birthday today. Ben Bass founded the store in 1927 on New York’s old Book Row; the Strand is the only one of those famous bookstores left.

(via Shelf Awareness)

vintageanchor: President Obama chats in the Blue Room of the...

Wed, 30 May 2012 08:31:50 -0400

vintageanchor:

President Obama chats in the Blue Room of the White House with author Toni Morrison, who received a Presidential Medal of Freedom yesterday.

"The story is a running scroll of a spy keeping a log of her current mission. Ms. Egan said that when..."

Tue, 29 May 2012 11:12:00 -0400

“The story is a running scroll of a spy keeping a log of her current mission. Ms. Egan said that when she was writing, she struggled not to make the language sound ‘gimmicky’ or ‘cartoonish.’”

- “A Jennifer Egan Original … Tweet by Tweet”

The New Yorker will be publishing a new fiction piece in the next issue by Jennifer Egan, written entirely in tweets. This reminded me of her short story published in The Guardian last summer in list form.

It’s sort of funny that Egan is taking on this role of fiction writer who embraces new forms of communication. When she was here on the occasion of A Visit from the Goon Squad, she talked about the synthesis of her Powerpoint chapter, and explained that she had to make presentation after presentation to learn how to use it effectively, despite her reluctance to catch on to new technology. See her discuss it here…

(via livefromthenypl)

newyorker: This evening, the New Yorker Fiction Department...

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:46:13 -0400

newyorker:

This evening, the New Yorker Fiction Department (@NYerFiction) will start tweeting Jennifer Egan’s new story “Black Box,” which will appear in its entirety in the Science Fiction issue, out on Monday. We asked Egan what inspired her to structure her story in paragraphs of a hundred and forty characters or fewer; click-through to read her response: http://nyr.kr/JpQHDv

Photo

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:12:33 -0400

"Libraries cannot fail to provide their readers with digitized material, especially in the form of..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 11:55:08 -0400

“Libraries cannot fail to provide their readers with digitized material, especially in the form of e-journals and databases, and they cannot stop buying printed books. Therefore, they must advance simultaneously on the analog and the digital fronts. That problem, compounded by diminishing funds, underlies the predicament of the New York Public Library. It won’t disappear if we reject the renovation plan and retain a twentieth-century mode of operation.”

- In Defense of the New York Public Library by Robert Darnton | The New York Review of Books (via marincitylibrary)

When I see our magazine on a newsstand...

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:03:00 -0400

Yup. Every AGNI sighting.

allisonmanning:

This is the face I made on Friday when I saw a man reading my story on the plane. I wanted to tap him on the shoulder and be like HEY! THAT’S ME.

"I once heard Leon Botstein, the President of Bard College, compare books to stairs. “They’ve..."

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:01:10 -0400

“I once heard Leon Botstein, the President of Bard College, compare books to stairs. “They’ve invented the elevator,” he said, “but sometimes you still walk up.” There are countless discussions on the future of the book—they are picked up in magazine feature articles, in trade conferences, and in academic roundtables—and in all of these, the future of the printed word seems certain: in a generation or two, print will become obsolete. In this age of changing habits, if print is the stairs and screens the elevator, then what could the escalator be?”

- Rhizome | Screen. Image. Text. (via thisistheverge)

latimes: A totally Californian poet laureate: Juan Felipe...

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:41:08 -0400

latimes:

A totally Californian poet laureate: Juan Felipe Herrera, 63, is the son of migrant farmworkers and plugged in to modern culture. He’d like to make the entire state a democratic, virtual poetry workshop.

Photo: Professor Juan Felipe Herrera, recently appointed California’s poet laureate by Gov. Jerry Brown, leads a poetry workshop at UC Riverside. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

"In matters like writing and painting, a man does what he has to do—if he has to write, why then, he..."

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:38:48 -0400

“In matters like writing and painting, a man does what he has to do—if he has to write, why then, he writes; and if he doesn’t feel the urgent need of writing, there are dozens of professions in which it is easier to earn a comfortable living. Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.”

- Malcolm Cowley in response to a letter asking whether one should pursue an MFA.

In the comments section, novelist Helen DeWitt serves a searing retort:

“…if he has to write, why then, he writes…” This is roughly what my penultimate agent, Bill Clegg, had to say on the subject. This is not so much the romantic point of view as the addict’s point of view. Anyone familiar with the world of publishing will know that it’s bullshit. The writer who is literally an addict, the writer who can’t help himself, the writer who HAS to write, can never be anything but an amateur, because the industry requires the professional to put writing on hold not just for a day or two, or a week, but for years.

(via believermag)

Poets Ranked By Beard Weight

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:29:00 -0400

Poets Ranked By Beard Weight:

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)Beard type: Hibernator
Typical opus: O Captain! My Captain!
Gravity/UPI rating: 22

Because…because, why not.

Photo

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:45:25 -0400

Judge comes down hard on publishers, Apple in e-book case

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:44:48 -0400

Judge comes down hard on publishers, Apple in e-book case:

infoneer-pulse:

In a strongly worded opinion, US District Judge Denise Cote rejected requests by Apple and five book publishers to throw out a class action suit that accuses them of price-fixing.

Citing ongoing state, federal and international antitrust investigations, Cote turned down arguments that Apple and the publishers had acted independently when they changed the pricing model for e-books.

» via paidContent

Want to download a postcard with a link and a blurb for my...

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:09:51 -0400

Want to download a postcard with a link and a blurb for my chapbook? Look no further.

Is Typing Changing the Way We Think?

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:25:47 -0400

Is Typing Changing the Way We Think?:

And, if it changes the way we think—the way we write?

teachingliteracy:

infoneer-pulse:

According to a new study exploring the interrelation of language and emotion, if a word consists of letters typed with predominantly the right hand, it is felt to be more positive in meaning; a word typed predominantly with the left hand is associated more with negative emotion.

The study included speakers of English, Spanish, and Dutch, both left- and right-handed, but all users of QWERTY keyboard layouts. Even made-up words like boshe, cheethe, plake, and throog were given value judgments that aligned with how they’d be typed.

» via Popular Science

poetsorg: Artist book by Liz Mathews featuring poetry by Muriel...

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:24:45 -0400

poetsorg:

Artist book by Liz Mathews featuring poetry by Muriel Rukeyeser

But the writing was the real freedom, because nobody told me...

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:56:41 -0400

But the writing was the real freedom, because nobody told me what to do there. That was my world and my imagination. And all my life it’s been that way, even now.

—Toni Morrison (via Interview Magazine)

And Rachel’s head explodes at the perfection of the...

Tue, 08 May 2012 14:32:32 -0400

And Rachel’s head explodes at the perfection of the pairing.

pantheonbooks:

newyorker:

Art Spiegelman visited Maurice Sendak in 1993 and drew the experience. We’ve unlocked the piece here: http://nyr.kr/JdQ2QS

This is lovely - thank you, New Yorker, for sharing.