Farrar, Straus and Giroux

July 2012

15 posts

“I guess I have always been
deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife
since I know from life
one cannot love another,
ever, really” —from Marilyn Monroe’s unpublished poems collected in Fragments, reviewed at Brain Pickings 

Jul 30, 20128 notes

#Fragments #Marilyn Monroe #celebs #film #lit #poetry #love

Jul 30, 201216 notes

#lit #Michael Cunningham #By Nightfall

Jul 24, 201215 notes

#lit #Will Hermes #Love Goes to Buildings on Fire

Summer Reading... and Programming → robinsloan.com

Robin Sloan has found the programming book of his dreams, “because it’s not primarily about the tools or the technology… Instead, the book is about feelings: arrogance, fear, intimacy…” It’s Ellen Ullman’s Close to the Machine—just out in paperback from Picador—and Sloan guides you through a JavaScript review to tell you why he loves it so much.

Jul 23, 2012

#Close to the Machine #Ellen Ullman #Robin Sloan #lit #tech

“I can’t separate my experience as a mother from my life as a writer. Writing has always been the way I order the universe and make sense of chaos. It’s how I figure out what I think and feel. It’s where I pour my anger and dread. It’s where I feel most free, and it’s where I fight. Becoming a parent has profoundly shaped my vision of the world, the same way that becoming a pirate or an arsonist or chronically ill changes your perspective and how you move in the world. You never look at the world the same way. The stakes are different. You are different. I know stuff about the world, about myself, I’d never know if I wasn’t someone’s mother. I’d like to think it’s made me a smarter, more compassionate human being. By the same token it also changes how people look at you. It’s funny we so often regards mothers as being one-dimensional, sexless, creatures—toothless, when in fact I know I’m a much more interesting and dangerous person now than I ever was before.” —Elissa Schappell, author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls, interviewed by Justin Taylor, author of The Gospel of Anarchy

Jul 23, 201265 notes

#Blueprints for Building Better Girls #Elissa Schappell #Justin Taylor #The Gospel of Anarchy #lit #motherhood #parenthood #writing

“It was clear from the start that a cerulean warbler was in many ways the star of the book, and we had to include one.” —Talking Covers interviews Jonathan Franzen about the cover of Freedom, and designer Charlotte Strick, on what went into creating it. 

Jul 18, 20122 notes

#lit #Jonathan Franzen #Freedom #design

“[NewBagel] was founded by a pair of ex-Googlers who wrote software to design and bake the platonic bagel: smooth crunchy skin, soft doughy interior, all in a perfect circle.” —Robin Sloan’s fictional bagel company in Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore has become a reality (by coincidence!). He says he hopes to serve them at his book parties. 

Jul 17, 20122 notes

#Robin Sloan #lit #Penumbra #Tech #Clairvoyance

“I have always thought that the absence of god liberated us from an unbearable weight. But more than once, I have missed the idea of divine mercy when entering or leaving a hospital. Filled with seats, corridors, hierarchies and ceremonies of hope, silent on their upper floors, hospitals are the closest thing to a cathedral in which we unbelievers may tread.” —from Andrés Neuman’s haunting story, “Mother Backwards,” in Work in Progress. (Originally published in The Coffin Factory.)

Jul 17, 201210 notes

#Andrés Neuman #lit #work in progress #hospitals #religion

“Whether we’re from rural Texas, New York, the suburbs of Paris, wherever, the world comes to makes less and less sense the deeper we immerse ourselves into art.” —Rowan Ricardo Phillips discusses his new book of poetry, The Ground, with The Rumpus Poetry Book Club.

Jul 11, 20122 notes

#lit #poetry #rowan ricardo phillips #the ground #quotes #art

“When the lights went out, the disruption was a testament to just how much was going on in New York City at night. At Ceasar’s Retreat in midtown, porn star Annie Sprinkle was in the middle of a blow-job-for-hire. At CBGBs, The Shirts were on a bill with the Romantics; Hilly cancelled the show, so guitarist Artie Lamonica and bassist Bob Rapiocco hung around and drank his beer by candlelight. The cast of Beatlemania led a singalong with acoustic guitars up at the Winter Garden in Times Square; a harpist for the Canadian Ballet plucked out the notes to “Dancing In The Dark” up at the Met. On the side blocks off Christopher Street, naked men in workboots fucked against parked cars.” —Will Hermes, author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, on the 1977 NYC blackout. This Friday is the blackout’s 35th anniversary, and Hermes is posting memories, radio broadcasts, and book excerpts on his blog all week.

Jul 9, 20123 notes

#Love Goes to Buildings on Fire #Will Hermes #lit #NYC #blackout

“My writing is more like hitchhiking than driving. While other writers control their work, I’m just a guest who is allowed to write it down.” —Etgar Keret, Critical Mob interview

Jul 9, 20128 notes

#Etgar Keret #Critical Mob #Writing #Lit #Quotes

Scenes from Ghost Milk (Quote & Image Generator)

“Toxic blight was all around, the ghost milk of dying industries.” - Iain Sinclair

(Inspired by Ghost Milk: Recent Adventures Among the Future Ruins of London on the Eve of the Olympics.)

Jul 5, 20121 note

#Ghost Milk #Iaian Sinclair #Quotes #lit #olympics

Jul 2, 201228 notes

“The rules Faulkner doesn’t ignore in this novel he tends to obliterate. The plot, for instance. There is none.” —John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead, writes a foreword to a new Modern Library edition of “Absalom, Absalom!” Read it in the New York Times. 

Jul 2, 201225 notes

#lit #john jeremiah sullivan #faulkner #absalom

“Learn to live on air… Avoid all messy and needy people including family; they threaten your work… Once you’ve truly begun, slow down. The difference between publishing two good books and forty mediocre books is terribly large.” — Sarah Manguso’s advice to young writers on how to have a career, in Work in Progress

Jul 2, 2012252 notes

#lit #sarah manguso #work in progress #advice #writing