A visualization of some odd writer rituals from Lapham’s Quarterly. Victor Hugo wrote naked in the bedroom, Emily Dickinson wrote poetry in the pantry, John Cheever wrote in his underwear in the basement. Lots of nude or semi-nude writing going on, I can see.

A pre-Catcher Salinger writes to Hemingway.

“He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.” This and more best metaphors ever, via.

In this week’s edition of Life’s Not Fair, Jersey Shore castmates JWOWW and Ronnie have landed a book deal.

How to become a literary star.

5 “wonderfully weird” book videos to add to the list.

What do David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Wikipedia have in common? Via.

James Franco edited by the New York Tyrant.

Robot Rilke, via.

Snarkmarket‘s Robin Sloan writes a piece of flash fiction with near real-time editing help from Twitter.

The problem with fairy tales.

Aaaand because it’s hump day, here is a plastic bag with the voice of Werner Herzog: Read more »

Nabokov at work

I.

Some of the greatest writers of our time have neglected the conventional image of a writer at his desk and opted instead for more unorthodox approaches.

Vladimir Nabokov wrote standing up at a lectern. He also wrote longhand, and only on index cards, so as to write scenes non-sequentially.

Philp Roth took Nabokov’s lead and added movement to his repertoire –– Roth claims to walk a half a mile for every page he writes.

Then there’s Tom Wolfe,. Wolfe was 6 feet 6 inches tall, so his reasoning for standing up might have been less about innovation than it was about finding a desk that wouldn’t destroy his knees.

II.

Then there were the horizontal writers. Read more »

Lucky Writer's Socks?

Baseball players are known to have strange pre-game rituals. Rob Murphy wore women’s underwear under his jock strap while pitching (honestly, can you think of anything less comfortable than a jock-strap-and-thong wedgie?), while Kevin Millar used to sprinkle his bats with doe pee when he was with the Florida Marlins. But as the phrase, “I’m going to write, so I’m taking the candle” left my mouth, I started wondering about the odd rituals of writers. Read more »