The memoir as manual

The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.

— Madame de Stäel, who died in 1817

“That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.”

Anthony Burgess, English Literature: A Survey for Students

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. 
~Franz Kafka

Amy Winehouse was only 27 years old when she died on July 23, 2011. As news of her passing broke across the globe, the English singer was quickly compared to other famous musicians whose lives ended at the same age, a group that has long been referred to as "The 27 Club." Amy joined Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and a handful of other stars whose deaths were unexpected and, in many cases, caused by substance abuse.

Amy Winehouse emerged as one of the most talented singers of the decade thanks to her 2006 album Back to Black. She racked up tons of industry praise and awards, becoming the first British woman to win five Grammys. But fame was not her friend. Amy's short life was plagued by bouts of depression, self-harm, eating disorders, and drug and alcohol addiction. She was in a toxic, volatile relationship with husband Blake Fielder-Civil, which led to even deeper spirals of substance abuse and outrageous behaviour and made her an increasingly easy target for the press and paparazzi. At the height of her notoriety, she was most known for being (for lack of a better word) a mess.

Amy Winehouse - The Official Website
Amy Winehouse - The Official Website

Good night. Your mind is yours alone and you decide who and what gets in. Draw the curtains. Make yourself at home.

Good morning. Do NOT get stuck in the comments section of life today. Make, do, create the things. Let others tussle it out. Vamos!

Gnight. Don’t forget to look up your work & let real life in. It makes your work better.

Good morning. You are perfectly cast in your life. I can’t imagine anyone but you in the role. Go play. 

Will Stephen ever get to read Cold River I wonder ... "I think the reason why Spielberg is so popular with audiences is because he is so adept at putting the viewer through the ringer. He doesn’t just objectively play out a scene, he engages the viewer directly and makes them experience the same emotions as his characters. I just saw Jaws for the first time. AMA.

The hyperrealistic drawings by this 11-year-old Nigerian artist are incredible 

The memoir as manual is a most irksome publishing craze. As if life were a tidy moral lesson, and every idiosyncratic experience worthy of extrapolation... The memoir as manual

The Western canon emerged from a textual culture. Now we're in a digital age, when information is infinite. What authority do the Great Books still possess? - What authority do the Great Books still possess

Are you spending time with the right people for your health and happiness?

While many of us focus primarily on diet and exercise to achieve better health, science suggests that our well-being also is influenced by the company we keep. Researchers have found that certain health behaviorsappear to be contagious and that our social networks — in person and online — can influence obesity, anxiety and overall happiness. A recent report found that a person’s exercise routine was strongly influenced by his or her social network.

Sometimes I think I understand why we women increasingly read novels. Novels, when they work, use lies to tell the truth. The information marketplace, battling for an audience, tends, more and more, to transform intolerable truths into novelistic, riveting, enjoyable lies. Elena Ferrante finds keeping up with the news “an extremely difficult task.”

• The philosopher queen
• Don't 'find your passion'
• The earliest "Odyssey"
• Odd literary paraphernalia
• RIP liberal contrarianism
• Secrets of the book critics
• Tom Wolfe, cartoonist
• "Virtue signaling"
• Grilling with Homer
• Advice for dark times 
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• Brit And Aussie Authors Are Still Unhappy With The Idea Of Letting Americans Into The Booker Race

  
  

  Peter Carey, two-time Booker winner, doesn’t think that the U.S. should be part of the conversation or the competition: “I am sure that American prizes don’t give a stuff about Australians or New Zealanders or Canadians, or any of those voices. An English prize does because there is still a family connection, a cultural connection that really does mean something.”
  
  
  
  HOW MUCH OF THE “SETTLED SCIENCE” WILL TURN OUT TO BE A PACK OF POLITICIZED LIES? Psychology Itself Is Under Scrutiny. Many famous studies of human behavior cannot be reproduced: Even so, they revealed aspects of our inner lives that feel true

  
  
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• What A Dreadful Way To Pick The Winner Of A Book Prize! 

  
  

  The Golden Man Booker. “As a system of selection, this is a curious conflation of the single expert and the wisdom of crowds — or, if you will, super elitism and mob rule. After all, each novel on the short­list was chosen by just one person (not nearly enough), and yet the winner was chosen by thousands (far too many). Having the unwashed public pick the best novel sounds wonderfully egalitarian, but it ignores all kinds of unanswerable questions about the self-selection and legitimacy of the voters.”
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• Alternative Nobel Reveals Its Longlist – And It’s A Pleasant Surprise 

  
  

  The New Academy asked Swedish librarians to nominate an author from anywhere in the world who has told the story of “humans in the world” – and the resulting longlist is surprisingly surprising. Yes, some of the perennial Nobel contenders are here, and deservedly so: Cormac McCarthy is nominated, as are Margaret Atwood, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Amos Oz and Haruki Murakami. But the librarians have also added some fresh faces to the usual suspects 

• Why Are Authors Advised To Ignore Bad Reviews? We’d Be Better Off If They Didn’t

  
  

  “Our literary culture would be richer if we could observe more interactions between authors and critics. (A couple of very smart people explain why they think this is a bad idea here.) Unfortunately, authors are routinely advised to ignore negative reviews, while positive reviews are showered with smiley faces on social media, as though literary criticism were simply an extension of book marketing.”

• So Why Did Amazon Price My Book At $2630.52?

  
  

  “Zowie,” the romance author Deborah Macgillivray wrote on Twitter last month after she discovered copies of her 2009 novel, “One Snowy Knight,” being offered for four figures. One was going for “$2,630.52 & FREE Shipping,” she noted. Since other copies of the paperback were being sold elsewhere on Amazon for as little as 99 cents, she was perplexed.