Olivetti Valentine: The Macintosh of the ’60s
In 1969, the great industrial designer Ettore Sottsass’ Valentine typewriter, for the Italian company, Olivetti, was on the market, intended to be what Sottsass called an “anti-machine machine,” and an “unpretentious toy.” It was a revelation: free of the conventional cast-iron casings common to all typewriters at the time, it was made of a light […]
Down By the River
As a writer who loves music—and dabbled as a professional player as a teenager and in my twenties—I love reading (and writing) about music. Listening to this great Neil Young track today reminded me that twenty years ago, I wrote this short piece that was published in MOJO, the British music magazine. ____________ Da-da-da-da-da, da-da da-da […]
The Dead Beat: A Documentary on Obituary Writers
“I show up each morning and ask, ‘who’s dead?’” says New York Times obit writer Margalit Fox in Vanessa Gould’s wonderful new documentary, Obit. When you think about it, this wouldn’t be the easiest doc to pitch to funders. It focuses on a bunch of middle-aged writers (all men except for Fox) who sift through […]
Lillian Ross: Invisible Observer
In May 1950, Lillian Ross, a 23-year-old New Yorker staff writer, became the talk of the town when the magazine published her sharply observed profile of Ernest Hemingway. Both praise and controversy followed. Written in an intimate, literary style, it was a warts-and-all portrait of a man who was, at the time, one of the […]
Erik Larson on Escaping the “Dark Country of No Ideas”
The most difficult part of my writing life begins the moment one of my books is launched. I am not talking here about the angst that arises while waiting for the first reviews to get published, though that is indeed a time of significant anxiety. No, the hard thing for me is beginning the search […]
Between the Lines: Longform’s Podcast
I’m a lover of podcasts, and my favorite is Longform. Hosted by Aaron Lammer and Max Linsky (co-founders of Longform Media) and Evan Ratliff (CEO of media and software company Atavist), it features hour-long interviews with longform writers (and occasionally editors or designers) and is a compelling behind-the-scenes look into the nuts and bolts of journalism. […]
The Typewriter Revolution
Like every technology throughout history, the typewriter had its revolutionary moment when it was a paradigm-shifting device, communicating ideas faster and more efficiently than anything previously imagined. Although there were many mechanical writing devices before it, the revolution really began with the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer (Christopher L. Sholes also invented the QWERTY keyboard, […]
The Worthy Elephant: On Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood
For the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication, a discussion of craft, veracity and the literary appeal of true crime. BY DAVID HAYES, SARAH WEINMAN HAZLITT BOOKS: JANUARY 27, 2016 The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.” Some […]
The Cold, Hard Facts About In Cold Blood
The occasion: This month marks the 50th anniversary of Truman Capote’s classic book, In Cold Blood, the story of the brutal murder of a farmer and his family in rural Kansas. What he said: Capote called it a “nonfiction novel” and told George Plimpton in a 1966 Paris Review interview: “One doesn’t spend almost six years […]
A Soft Landing at the Intersection of Creative and Nonfiction
Q: In July 1942, eight Lockheed P-38 Lightnings and two Boeing B-17 Bombers made a crash landing on the Greenland ice cap. Five decades later, while writing a book on a salvage operation of one of the planes, I wanted to reconstruct what happened in 1942 so readers would feel as though they were present, […]