Helen DeWitt
@helendewitt
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Author of The Last Samurai, Lightning Rods, Some Trick. Interested in languages, statistics, dataviz. NOT Helen de Witt the film curator, who is @diamantecroc
Berlin (DE); Vermont (US)
Joined March 2009
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Cormac McCarthy is dead. Martin Amis is dead. People are making nice noises about their dedication to style. None of it makes any difference to authors who imagine they can choose their influences, as McCarthy and Amis did.
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Wow. On mailing list of a small publisher who sent an email saying they're hiring, 2 jobs in London paying £25K & £30K. I was offered £33K to stay on at a law firm as a legal secretary in 1998
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Ian Marchant has chosen The English Understand Wool as his favourite book of 2023 in
@ChurchTimes
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A reader has very kindly agreed to reclear permissions throughout the world for THE LAST SAMURAI & also to tackle permissions for a possible audiobook, so am trying to pull together the existing material instead of just sending off a mass of correspondence
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Tempting to add to a neverending thread, but no. The quote I wanted for the cover of Lightning Rods was:
LIGHTNING RODS! I HATE THAT BOOK!!! Mary DeWitt Griffin (Helen's Mom)
Totally unsolicited, btw, so trustworthy! Publishers strangely unkeen.
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PS, clause I use: The Publisher shall have the right to edit the Work but agrees to make no changes in the text—including, w/o limitation, style of punctuation, spelling, capitalization and usage—without prior written approval from the Author.
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I'd like to see the introduction of a McCarthy Clause as standard in contracts from publishers who claim to take literature seriously. The BOILERPLATE shd be a clause giving the author final approval on matters of usage, punctuation, style.
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As a reader I want to see the traces of Faulkner & Hemingway in McCarthy r than the slip of paper over the toilet. I want to see the traces of Bellow & Nabokov in Amis rather than the slip of paper over the toilet.
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Afterthought. I once did take a workshop. This was an intensive weekend workshop on lockpicking, which took place at a hotel in the E Midlands. It was GREAT! We had to sign a statement to effect no criminal record etc but I don't think anyone checked
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I probably can't stay in Berlin, so am trying to get book collection down to what I can afford to store. Have been compiling list for bookshop that sells secondhand books, but if anyone in Berlin sees something they'd like let me know. Free to good home.
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@TheLincoln
@colindickey
Also, it selects for the kind of person who is shameless about asking for refs. (Now that I've been asked for refs by people I barely know, & seen the startling track record on their CVs, I can see this is a worryingly dominant strategy.)
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We've had all the McCarthy we're going to get. Surely we shouldn't subscribe to a principle that allows the automatic erasure of his influence, upon publication, of writers immersed in his sentences? The McCarthy Clause: we want it now.
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A mere 6 months after my last book came out I am updating my website. I know a lot of indie bookstores now sell online; if anyone would like to be included under Where To Buy do let me know
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There are people who look to the Chicago Manual of Style or Strunk & White for guidance, who have not been avidly following
@LanguageLog
, who haven't read Lieberman & Pullum's Far from the Madding Gerund, or Anne Curzan's Fixing English
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There was also:
I think this could destroy your career. Alison Samuel, Senior Editor Chatto & Windus
You might want to publish this under another name. Lois Wallace (agent of Don DeLillo)
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New Russian edition of The Last Samurai arrived yesterday after failed attempt at delivery to Berlin address, return to sender. Pretty sweet. (We now know the Russian for short-list & long-list.)
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@3v3ha
@IlyaGridneff
@BacklistedPod
Yes.
@DeepVellum
has sent us a contract, I have sent notes to our agent who will discuss w DV, I think the plan is to publish in 2024 in the
@Dalkey_Archive
imprint
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This was a contract that had been gone over & passed on to me by an agent! I naturally replaced this garbage with a clause that gave author final approval (also in all my contracts with
@NewDirections
).
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23 years later, there's still an assumption that a normal part of production is "cleaning up the text" - the boilerplate clause still gives the publisher the right to bring a text into compliance w house style, as I discovered on getting a contract last Nov from
@DeepVellum
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McCarthy’s style was instantly recognisable: sparse, often entirely omitting punctuation and using polysyndeton – inserting conjugations to slow the rhythm of his language [Grauniad strikes again]
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Robert Gottlieb wd apparently argue for hours over a semi-colon, but a lot of people in the biz don't have a strong personal preference, they're just anxious to have the slip of paper on the toilet.
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A tweet re copyediting turned up in my TL yesterday, making familiar claims: the copyeditor is not judging you, just wants to make sure you wanted to do whatever it is you did. You don't have to explain, in fact they don't want an explanation. STET is fine. 1/8
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It's 23 years since a copyeditor Tippexed out my mark-up (despite contract giving author final approval), abetted by production mgr & editor
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But that doesn't change the fundamental assumption, that it's the NORM to pass a text on to a copyeditor to act as textual chambermaid (in my days as a ch'd I wd signal that a room had been cleaned by sliding a slip of paper over the seat of the toilet, & texts need this signal)
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An editor who thought McCarthy was dreary & pretentious, that The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was "a very special book" (this is, of course, what a final approval clause is meant to protect against)
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My author's copies of the Korean edition of Lightning Rods have come, and are SO witty and clever. Despise me if you dare, my only smartphone is a Tracfone that does not work in Germany, but here are some pics taken with my laptop
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I don't think I dare to read it, but anyone who does can tell me anything they think I should know
Lee Konstantinou's (
@LKonstan
) THE LAST SAMURAI REREAD explores what makes
@helendewitt
's novel so extraordinary and the extraordinary story behind its publication. Read an excerpt in
@PublicBooks
#Rereadings
@ColumbiaUP
@n_j_dames
@triaspirational
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Who would not be glad to know this? Esp since the posters are often of films so different in style from Ozu's?
In many of his silent films, Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu included posters from movies he liked
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Have just had an email from a reader whose book club has finished The Last Samurai. The previous book was The Brothers Karamazov. The next book is Billy Budd. First book club I've heard of that my ex might have liked (favourite novel, Moby Dick, favourite author Faulkner).
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If the contract had been respected, I could have signed off on the book & gone back to other, unfinished books (the clause was also, of course, meant to protect my time)
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@tomandlorenzo
My sister and I (3, 5) flooded our house in Mexico by flushing the head of a baby doll we hated down the toilet
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James Wood reviews Some Trick in the New Yorker:
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Discovered a few days ago that most of my website is virtually unreadable on my phone. Only got smartphone in 2021 bc needed to show vax status in Berlin, so website has probably been like this for much longer. The horror. Looking into Squarespace with dread.
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I had my appt w the immigration dept last month, lawyer came & handled everything, astonishingly was given permanent residence r th the 3yr freelance permit which he'd thought was best we could hope for (i.e. we weren't even APPLYING for permanent). 1/3
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Restless Books is offering a $10K prize & publication for debut work of fiction by first-generation immigrant
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Found sketch (unfinished) of my mother from 1978 in old drawing pad (you can see the bits I wd have had to work a lot harder to get right) - she would have been 44
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At the time my former bedsit in Zone 2 was going for £60 a week (I think it's now up to £200)
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Got letters today from IRS & German tax authorities, which I naturally opened in dread - owe no money to IRS & the Steuerbehörde is going to send a refund of 2500 €, so whew & wow. Anguish of preparing tax returns rewarded (only those familiar w ELSTER can really understand)
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supposed to be commenting on proposed cover for new book, revisiting Bookmarks (as one does)
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People may find that they could be a lot less stressed if they organized around collective resources — by building community, and engaging more politically in solidarity with others in changing our political and economic systems.
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This is crazy. Who could seriously think: Yes, I'm willing to sacrifice all the other books you could be finishing to a slip of paper on the toilet. People will think we're not serious if we don't have a slip of paper on the toilet.
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@ScottHech
I was having trouble getting to sleep at 6 am after night shifts looking after my mother, started using the 20-lb weighted blanket I'd bought her, which she hated: fabulous. Even if I only have a few hours, gives very deep sleep.
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Exh'd. Wrote new webpage for Some Trick, updated MANY OTHER webpages, all, God help me, in raw HTML. Have now tried to upload to host but as so often in the past something is Wrong, failed connection, only a Campari & soda at the Four Columns is keeping me from going berserk.
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ICYMI "It is difficult to ask actors to speak more clearly. ... Sometimes, speaking the most common Danish accents would simply make the movies and the characters seem implausible" (Why Danes get subtitles for Danish movies)
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My mother came home from rehab today. I got her wheelchair in over the tough step at the front door; she looked around, amazed.
'I LOVE this! They've done a WONDERFUL job! They must have spent millions!'
'They' = the people who have created an exact replica of her home.
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Lost for words. Grateful, shamefaced. Want to make beeline back for Germany, but probably need to stay at least another 2 months. Have no conceivable claim on my sister's bf, so this was unbelievably kind.
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In fact I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of making tiny, tiny little pieces of music.
Brian Eno on the design specs for the Windows 95 startup chime:
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@MoiraDonegan
Wilson is, unsurprisingly, bothered by instances of philological carelessness (to which the publishers were sublimely oblivious), but seemed to me to give a generally appreciative reading of Carson's work, so, well, ¿K?
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I'm rereading Mark Girouard's Life in the English Country House & am shocked to find that it is apparently out of print. Went back to it bc I was thinking how glorious it is to get maybe 1 non-spam email a day, to have 2 inboxes kept at 0 since New Year, 1 w 4 pre-2020 to answer
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New followers: Twitter won't let me follow new people (they raised the ban briefly a while back & I abused their trust by following 20+ people in
@_ryanruby_
's TL) so non-follow-back does not mean you would not spark joy. I know I am not really crushed under heel of despotism
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@J_Zuckerman
It is a novella. A SHORT novella. Still, it will be out in the world (rather than lurking on my hard drive) in July
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I think this little guy (black swallowtail) is one of the parsley caterpillars who chomped my parsley last fall!
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The kind of linguistically-informed argument put forward to defend author's usage looks illegitimate because it doesn't describe to the slip of paper on the toilet.
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Have clearly been reading too much
@valmcdermid
, immediately wonder whether a serial murderer is at large in the Swarthmore College Libraries. Worth investigating in more ways than one if you're in the area?
Current positions that are open:
⚬ Underhill Assistant
⚬ Library Event Coordinator
⚬ Library Event Assistant
⚬ Usability Student Assistant
⚬ Collections Management Assistant
⚬ Comics Collection Assistant (new!)
Apply in JobX!
#swat2023
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Read piece on Big Publishing in
@thenation
including discussion of Cormac McCarthy apparently drawing on
@dan_sinykin
's book Big Fiction. Piece claims McCarthy wrote an accessible Western after getting agent, new editor. Maybe that was the chronology, but I don't see it in BF
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Time to retweet one of
@simongerman600
's finest retweets.
Time to retweet one of
@chazhutton
's finest works. This is the map of every (Western) city. Seems pretty accurate when considering Berlin and Melbourne I must say...
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I think if I were teaching at a college I wd probably line up a series of intensive workshops like this, with the writing class as the hub, so maybe more of a
@hampshirecolg
type of course. There cd be intensive language workshops (read 10 lines of Iliad after 2 hrs, etc.)
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Was reading Selina Hasting's biography of Somerset Maugham & discouraged by a common omission. SM was apparently a keen bridge player who wd play every night when he had the chance, but we're told nothing about his preferences as a player
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A few readers have asked to buy a PDF of Your Name Here, recently referred to in a review by Lauren Oyler . Seems churlish to argue w a reviewer who describes me as peerless, b YNH is not MY book, it's a collab w Aussie journo
@IlyaGridneff
& at the time
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Great piece on bilingual authors' objection to italicizing non-English words. Seems so odd to require a word to pass a naturalization exam. (Congrats, croissant, you're now one of us...)
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How has this happened? Am now exchanging messages with people on LinkedIn. People I actually know & like. How has LinkedIn become our link? Shoot me now.
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@AmericanGwyn
@PlinioAlzavola
The original title (The Seventh Samurai) made sense but couldn't be used
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Samurai fans in London, Amy Buchanan is developing a play based on The Last Samurai (We Never Get Off at Sloane Square); there will be an R&D showing on 13 July, 7 pm at the Pear Tree, 14 Margravine Road, Fulham.
A couple of theatres have already expressed interest in coming to my R&D showing. Wanna join them?
#sloanesquareplay
#newwriting
#theatre
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So relieved. Had to go to ER in US in Dec 2020, 3 ulcers found, was told to have follow-up endoscopy b cd not get health ins covering pre-existing condns & feared astronomical self-pay. Had endoscopy this am & dr says alles normal, no ulcers, all good. 400 euros. Whew.
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My mother had never seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,thought she'd like it, started playing it on Netflix/Roku after dinner, 20 minutes in she said she hated it. Switched to The Crown, which she liked. Said she was not an intellectual. Hey ho.
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Very sorry to hear of the death of Jan Morris. As a writer, I often remember JM's account of her time as a cadet, when the boys were told by the drill master to show a bit of swagger. I do think a book should show a bit of swagger.
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@michhastings
@erinscafe
This is why people who don't have a pool, but know someone who does, need so many towels.
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How could any appreciative quote improve on this? Publishers! Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. Etc.
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Funnily. I hate writing bios, so supply does not meet demand. Several years ago a British ed asked for a bio. I pondered. Well, I converted to Judaism in 1985, & the one thing I know from long talks w my ex is that Jews always want to know if someone is Jewish
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Chuffed. Took 140 bus to Ikea Tempelhof & got booster shot (Moderna after 1-dose J&J in April) after mere hour in line in bitterly cold underground car park. Thanks Twitter for tip re this Mobilimpfzentrum! Tip reported empty walk-in, but hey, Ikea on Saturday, not too shabby
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"But books didn’t survive by being preserved in a library. No ancient library has survived to the present day. Books survived by being copied."
@PeterGainsford
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MacDowell is now accepting applications for Spring/Summer 2024 - NB they now don't require references
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Awww
This is the most interested I have ever seen Trump be in another human being
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“When I went into this program with prisoners, I was not an advocate for the inmates," she continued. "I didn’t like them. This was a means to an end to save these animals." cats in prisons, ht
@TylerCowen
,
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fun fact, when I was 6-8 I lived on Observatory Place in DC, up the street from Ian MacKaye (his sister Katie was in my class), was taken to FL, Brazil, Colombia, missed out on IM's music - life before FB, cats & kittens
DC’s Legendary Punk Label Dischord Records Makes Its Entire Music Catalog Free to Stream Online
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Had medical crisis in Dec (vomiting blood, ugh), went to ER, had unfortunately just been trying to sign up for health insurance when rudely interrupted. Turned out I had 3 ulcers. My sister said she and her boyfriend would help with the bills, but I obv didn't want to impose
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@dustin82
Johnson's aesthetic judgments are almost invariably subtle, or solid, or bold; they have always some good quality to recommend them – except one: they are never right. That is an unfortunate deficiency; but [] Johnson has made up for it, and [] his wit has saved all. (Strachey)
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So am revisiting the buoyancy properties of the grebe, consecutive waw, Magnus Magnusson's translation of Njal's Saga, the wisdom of Mr Richie & so on. (In other words, trying to clear the deck in the last days of 2021.)
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UK readers! Some Trick will be released in the UK on September 24! Long delay because publishing is deeply weird. Turns out UK publishers do not like to take on a book that has already been published in US & had enthusiastic reviews, bc it has used up all the review space. So 1/2
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THANK YOU
@Soc_of_Authors
!!!! Just came in and found letter informing of grant, with cheque, that will let me replace expiring MacBook !!!! THANK you!
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Took some books down to put on wall outside house, got stopped by woman who asked what I was doing, I said they were zum Verschenken, she said No, people were always putting trash outside, they cd not go there
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I have put ads for the Shaker pencil post bed on Craigslist, Nextdoor, and FB. Pretty sure most followers are nowhere near DC, but if anybody happens to be looking for a bed here's the ad: (Sadly, Helen DeWitt Slept Here is probably not much of a draw) 3/3
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@richsin603
@DrShaena
Why do people hate on the passive voice? It is THE weapon of choice for those fly-in-my-soup moments (cf
@MargaretAtwood
's The Edible Woman), & gives so much innocent pleasure!
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arm in cast to protect hematoma, have offered job of stoking coal ovens twice a day to neighbor's 13yo kid. Not sure how much to pay, neighbor thinks €20 a day would be too much but doesn't want to propose alternative. Any suggestions?
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How much better if every schoolchild had Pullum & Lieberman's Far From the Madding Gerund and Anne Curzan's Fixing English: Prescriptivism & language history. Oh well. I shall go back to bed. 8/8
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The teacher, whose day job was doing repos, explained that an early sign of a recession was rise in repos, so locksmiths were often the first on the ground to know. His co-teacher had taken the course himself & then gone to a junkyard to practice on every discarded door
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I realized that the holes were essential to the story. The holes needed to stay empty for the reader to fill in. (Watterson)
This video on their publishers account of Bill Watterson and John Kascht's talking about the collaborative process on their new book only has like 300 views which I find hilarious.
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@lynnsstrong
Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Sterne, Tristram Shandy.
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Andrey Kurkov, Ukrainian author of Death & the Penguin + many others, will be taking part in a fundraiser for Ukraine (Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital) w
@LRBbookshop
, online Fri March 11 7pm GMT, more here
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Looking on the bright side, several experts in dataviz have offered to help with my next book (should clearly include more notes to the reader in my books).
“If we wanted to call
@helendewitt
a genius, the content of her genius might be found in her rigorous failure to comfortably inhabit her own time.”
@LKonstan
@NewDirections
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I was thinking of sending this to my sister, who teaches second grade, but there is no attempt to explain Italian plurals, diminutives, [antonym of diminutives for which English has no word], & these matter at least as much as the core meaning of, e.g., spago
The name origins behind different types of pasta.
#etymology
#food
#pasta
#linguistics
#infographic
#guide
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@kindermommy
@Bookdwarf
@everywhereist
Though often they're quite nice about it. (Loved this recipe! I replaced ingredients a,b,c,d with w,x,y,z, used a steamer instead of roasting, 20 minutes instead of 40, and it came out great! Family favorite!)
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