BOOKS THAT MATTER: “Seabiscuit: An American Legend”
I don’t care about horse racing, nor do I have any special affinity for horses, other than admiring the noble animals the way anyone would. But in her work of historical nonfiction, Seabiscuit: An American Legend, Laura Hillenbrand had me from the first sentence: “In 1938 the year’s number-one newsmaker was not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hitler […]
A Grammar Rule to Put Up With
Atlas Obscura is a wonderful online magazine & digital media company founded in 2009 by writer Joshua Foer & filmmaker Dylan Thuras. Filled with wonderful arcana & curiousities, I liked this because it’s a rule imprinted on my mind, making me unable to end a sentence with a preposition unless I was ordered to at […]
Beautiful Joe
Among the classic children’s books my parents read to me (and I later read myself), was Beautiful Joe. It was a fictionalized telling of a true story about a medium-sized mutt (probably part bull terrier and part fox terrier) owned by a farmer in Meaford, ON in the late 1900s who brutally abused him (chopping off […]
When “Deep Throat” Outed Himself
From the 1974 book, and especially the 1976 movie, we all know the story. Two young Washington Post reporters take down the U.S. president with the help of a mysterious government source nicknamed Deep Throat (memorably played in the movie by Hal Holbrook), who devises secret signals and arranges nocturnal meetings in underground parking garages. […]
“String Wrapped (Typewriter)” (2012)
British artist and sculptor Ruth Broadbent’s “String Wrapped (Typewriter).” One aspect of her work explored the form, function, and identity of everyday objects, like this Underwood. (It appears to be an Underwood 4 portable, although it might be the very similar, but slightly updated, Universal, circa 1930s.) “In contrast to our modern world, where everything […]
Writers at Work
It’s hard to take a picture of a working writer because, well, nothing much happens. We type. During interviews, we’re always in the shadow of our subjects. The action is in our minds, processing information, formulating the next questions, figuring out a new strategy to coax from subjects thoughts that aren’t forthcoming. Maybe it looks […]
Vintage Typewriter Advertising Mirrors
Vintage pocket mirrors (really “lipstick mirrors”) were popular incentive gifts from the late 18th century to the 1960s. This one [left] is a celluloid pocket mirror featuring a Monarch Visible typewriter, dated to pre-1908. It promotes the (self-evident) fact that “every word written on the Monarch Visible typewriter is visible.” (Referring to some early […]
The Shadow in the Garden
I finished reading James Atlas’ curious, somewhat rambling, book The Shadow in the Garden, which is, really, an autobiography of a biographer. Atlas is known for two biographies–Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet (1977), and Bellow: A Biography (2000), as well as being the editor of the Penguin Lives series of short biographies. His two main […]
The Evolution of the Book
Julie Dreyfus is a copywriter and editor at Christie’s auction house in New York. Early in her career, she was an intern at Christie’s working in the books and manuscripts department. With her animation collaborators, she sets out to answer three questions in this short video for TED-Ed, the educational arm of the famous media […]
Graydon Carter’s Formula for Magazine Articles
“I believe that the best magazine articles have at least two–and better three–elements to them: access, narrative, and disclosure. That is,: on-the-ground reporting; a story arc with a beginning, middle, and end; and revelations that move the scholarship forward. A great magazine article must also always have at its core a measure of conflict.” — […]