Category: words

Well, why not? The original essayist might be the way to go. “On Solitude is one of Montaigne’s many small masterpieces. It’s an essay, typically short and, as always, disarmingly conversational. It discusses, without any hint of didacticism, the merits of being alone. Montaigne insists throughout his essays that he’s writing only to further his own understanding of life; that he’s totally unqualified, and we can ignore him if we like.” But let’s ignore our screens instead. – The Irish Times

The iconic San Francisco bookstore founded by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti said in its GoFundMe appeal that it was continuing to pay salaries and health care for its employees, but that it wasn’t doing online orders to keep its people safe – and thus was out of money. Thousands of people responded. – San Francisco Chronicle

Novelist Waubgeshig Rice: “It kind of blew my mind. … I wrote that plot point of Moon of the Crusted Snow just as a what if, not as a how-to guide.” – CBC

Who decided messing with Edna O’Brien was a good idea? Ian Parker of The New Yorker, that’s who. But “after a complicated relationship with her home country – in 2015 President Michael Higgins made an official apology for the scorn formerly heaped on her by the Irish – O’Brien is now regarded as a national treasure in Dublin” and Irish literary scholars have responded to Parker in kind. – The Observer (UK)

Patchett isn’t actually alone because her co-owner and staff are still coming in, carefully distanced from each other, to work so they can ship books to all of those desperately wanting new reads while self-quarantining. “I understand now that we’re a part of our community as never before, and that our community is the world. When a friend of mine, stuck in his tiny New York apartment, told me he dreamed of being able to read the new Louise Erdrich book, I made that dream come true. I can solve nothing, I can save no one, but dammit, I can mail Patrick a copy of The Night Watchman.” – The Guardian (UK)

Are books therapeutic? Is reading itself, with the concentration it requires, even possible now? Yes, but make it social. “The experience has been, by turns, surprisingly insightful and predictably frustrating, but above all, it has given me something to look forward to.” – The Atlantic

Elizabeth Outka: “I have spent the last five years writing a book about how the sensory and affective climate of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic infuses interwar literature, often in ways we have not recognized. My new awareness of the traces of that pandemic shifts my perception of this one, as if the sights and sounds from a century ago have re-emerged, becoming timely in ways I both feared and never wanted.” – The Paris Review

Amazon was overwhelmed by orders once retail closed and Jeff Bezos announced that all third-party merchants who sell non-essential items could no longer use Amazon’s warehouses or shipping. That includes books. Now writers are struggling to get their books sold. – The Times (UK)

At the end of March, Gardners announced that it could not keep staffers at a safe distance from each other and still pack and send out books. Four days later, the company was back at work — shipping orders to home customers, a skeleton staff standing well apart. – Melville House

“The French antitrust agency gave the Alphabet Inc. unit three months to thrash out deals with press publishers and agencies demanding talks on how to remunerate them for displaying their content. The search engine giant may have abused its dominant market power, causing ‘serious and immediate harm’ to the media, the Autorité de la concurrence warned in its statement on Thursday.” – Bloomberg