Categories

Ten Books Chosen by Maaza Mengiste

by

The Ethiopian novelist picks a lyrical novel in which the central character is a house, a biography of an iconic revolutionary, and a fictional exploration of the real-life trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

The Art of the Essay: Four Masters of the Form Discuss Their Craft

by

“The essay is alive; there is no reason to despair,” wrote Virginia Woolf. At the Deep Water Literary Fest in 2019, we gathered four essay writers to discuss how this statement still holds true. While the pandemic made it impossible to meet for a second iteration of the discussion this past year, we find solace by distilling the thoughts offered to us by Alexander Chee, Sloane Crosley, Laura Kipnis, and Luc Sante. This discussion was moderated by professor and poet Sandra Lim.

This Virginia Woolf Lecture on How to Read is Everything

by

It is simple enough to say that since books have classes – fiction, biography, poetry – we should separate them and take from each what it is right that each should give us. Yet few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, […]

On the Selflessness of Cats

by

In his new book, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life, the philosopher John Gray mines his lifetime studying cats to test the limits of western philosophy. In this extract, Gray asserts that a cat’s lack of self and ability to live in the moment is a strength that humans can only wish they had.

A Very Notting Hill Revolution

by

Launching a literary journal in 1974, it turns out, was not all that different to launching one in 2020. You needed two conditions: a pool of talented writers and money.

For Emma Tennant, the descendant of Scottish aristocrats, there was no problem fulfilling the first condition. “I’ve just met Jimmy Ballard,” she writes on the first page of The Burnt Diaries, her account of running a small literary magazine while embarking on a torturous affair (is there any other?) with the poet Ted Hughes, then widely seen as complicit in Sylvia Plath’s suicide.

“Don’t Talk About Sylvia.”

by

‘If I left England,’ Ted says, and chooses the most melodious of his many tones of voice to deliver the punchline, ‘I have a feeling England would collapse. We’re a little tribe here, you know, with the Queen looking after us. Where would I go?’

The Quickest Way to Lose Money

by

The art director Julien Rothenstein talks about the trials and tribulations of designing a literary journal in 1970s Britain. What were your first impressions of Emma Tennant? Julian Rothenstein: After I met Emma, within three days I was driving around in her ancient Mercedes Benz with The Supremes blasting out of the sound system. I […]

Keep Out

by

Back in early spring, when morgues in Italy were running out of space, and people were still coming to blows over toilet paper at the supermarket, Iain McKell returned to the fisherman’s cottage he was renting in Weymouth, an English seaside resort, to find a note pushed through his door: “You should not be in Weymouth, go back to where you live.”