Girls Gone Wilder

OK, there's a part of me that waxes nostalgic about reading Laura Ingalls Wilder because I share her last name. But the other part really loved reading those books when I was a kid. So it was with intrigue and fondness that I read this piece in Salon about Rose Wilder Lane and her life. The Wilder women also are the subjects of an Aug. 10 New Yorker piece.

From the Salon piece (quoting author Wendy McClure here): "For some reason Rose went out of her way to promote the idea of her mother as the sweet little lady pouring out her life in notebooks. She did it at her expense, and maybe ours, too, because I really wish that as a kid I'd gotten to hear more about Rose's writing life. For God's sake, the woman spent a whole winter in an unheated Greenwich Village flat typing and sleeping under newspapers, and somehow that's not as cool as twisting hay?"

Poetry from normal, banal life

Robert Pinsky writes about Alexander Pope and finding poetry in the mundane on Slate, here.

"All I have is intense curiosity."

I am eating up this Paris Review interview with Gay Talese. He works in a bunker (former wine cellar) in his house and writes longhand before typing on a typewriter before transferring his later draft to computer. He takes notes on cardboard shirtboards, like you might find at a drycleaners. Oh, and he's been hailed for writing one of the greatest magazine stories ever.

Mmm, delicious books

Newberry Library Book Fair this weekend. Any takers?

Are you a literary lightweight?

Take this quiz from the BBC magazine to test your literary knowledge. It's a random sample from the General Certificate of Secondary Education, which is taken by 15- and 16-year-olds in the UK. I did... much worse than I would have liked.

In which I suggest things you read online:

Useful:
Brevity's "Craft Essays"
in which we read short essays on the craft of nonfiction writing

Enlightening:
Papercuts Blog "Living with Music" Series
in which authors discuss their current playlists, often made of eclectic choices

Moving:
Pacing the Panic Room Blog
in which a dad-to-be (now a new dad) writes "candidly and vividly about the building of (his) family"

Screamin' seafaring tale wins bad writing contest

Thanks to the Washington Post and the AP, which keep me up to date on each year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

This year's winner:
Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.

Printers Row Lit Fest this weekend!

From the Trib:

 

Join the Chicago Tribune for the Midwest's largest literary event! This outdoor festival offers the opportunity to hear authors speak and debate their works. It also features unique booksellers, poetry readings, exhibitors, kids activities, cooking demos, wine tastings, and much more. Hours are from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on June 6-7.

My top picks (I wish that I could get to these, but I'm not sure if it'll happen): Neil Gaiman and Elmore Leonard. Columnist Leonard Pitts is in a panel discussion, which could be good. And Amy Dickinson (of the Ask Amy column) will be chatting about her book. And music critic Greg Kot is on the schedule too. Oh, also: Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle will be talking about graphic novels. 

Schedule, map and more here. 

A writer's cure for writer's block

There's a little thing I do when I can't write: When I'm feeling sleepy, when my head is in a fog, I reach across my desk, digging under the piles of unanswered mail, to unearth my copy of Herzog by Saul Bellow. And then I open the book — anywhere— and read a paragraph.

From Jeffrey Eugenides on NPR 

hey, so anyway...

this is going on this week:
pilcrow lit fest (the calendar!)