101 books about cities

Perhaps more than at any other time in American history, where we live determines much about the way we think about the world. Curbed's urban experts present 101 books about where and how we live.

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ON LITERARY OSMOSIS AND THE PERILS OF TRYING TO WRITE IN FAMOUS PLACES

 Adrian McKinty tries to get some writing done in Kafka's old office in Prague.

I wrote a couple of opening lines and crossed them out and got a fresh sheet of paper and stared at that for a while.
 I looked through the window at the building opposite. This must have been Franz’s view when he was writing those bloody insurance reports. It was an attractive building and on the third floor there was a large, peculiar sheep bas relief highlighted in gold paint. If it was there back then Kafka must have stared at that sheep for hundreds of hours. He did in fact write one short story about a sheep, “A Crossbreed,” which is a story about an animal that is half-cat, half-sheep with odd eating habits and dietary restrictions. It’s not his best work if I’m honest.

More: Literary Hub

See the Detailed Diagrams Kathy Acker Drew of Her Dreams

Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School is a metafictional account of her relationship with Peter Gordon. The novel contains reproductions of Acker’s hand-drawn Dream Maps.

Via Literary Hub

Marcel Proust died on this date in 1922

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu, died at 51 on this date.



Via Dr. Caligari's Cabinet

Charles Bukowski Wrote So Fast His Publisher Couldn't Keep Up

For a controversial writer who always seemed to be on a binge, Charles Bukowski was prolific beyond words. Writing some 5,000 poems should be proof enough. But how—and when—did he manage to pump out so many poems? His German discipline and endurance helped; his slovenliness didn’t.

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The Kids Of Bowery's Hardcore 'Matinee,' Then And Now

From 1983 to 1985 photographer Drew Carolan set up a make shift mobile studio on the Bowery in close proximity to the iconic CBGB's - where he intercepted kids, bands, and assorted characters on their way to and from hardcore matinees.



Recently he found himself wondering "Where are they now? Who have they become?" He decided to track the kids down. In his new book, Matinee: All Ages On The Bowery, he presents his portraits ... the boots, leather, patches, buzzed heads and middle fingers.

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Matinee: All Ages On The Bowery is out now via Radio Raheem Records.

Thanks David!

Why Urban Dictionary Is Horrifically Racist

It is terrifying to think that a whole generation of young men is reinforcing the idea that it is OK to call Serena Williams an “ape” or to define Rihanna as “Chris Brown’s punching bag.”

Started in 1999 by then-computer science student Aaron Peckham, the crowd-sourced online dictionary that The New York Times calls the “lexicon of instant argot” has grown over the past two decades into an internet behemoth.But the crowd-sourced repository of internet slang is rife with racist and sexist content and owner Aaron Peckham doesn't seem to care. 



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Imprisoned but not silenced – Day of the Imprisoned Writer

Each year, on 15 November, PEN International, PEN Centres and PEN members from around the world commemorate the Day of the Imprisoned Writer to highlight and campaign on behalf of writers who face unjust imprisonment, attacks, harassment and violence simply for expressing themselves.

Started in 1981 by PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee, the day is marked by celebrating the freedom to write, and by taking action to call for justice and freedom for imprisoned and murdered colleagues. Since 15 November 2015 at least 35 writers have been killed worldwide as a result of their work.

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How would Emily Dickinson fare with online dating?

Erin Bealmear didn't want to be "the kind of woman who spends all her time talking about boys." She started humorously answering questions on the OK Cupid dating site, imagining how Emily Dickinson would answer them. For an extra layer of authenticity, she included specific details from the 19th-century American poet's life:

What I’m doing with my life

Being a hermit. Overusing the dash. 

I’m really good at

Breaking rules, specifically capitalization and punctuation. 

Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food

Movies: What is a movie?

Books: Wordsworth, Browning, Keats, Emerson, Shakespeare (i.e. dead people)

Music: Yes, I do enjoy playing the piano on occasion. Thank you for asking.

Food: Baked goods, especially my famous gingerbread. I love making it for the neighborhood children, but I can’t leave the house. Instead, I stand at the window and lower it down to them in a basket. It’s so much easier that way.

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Law and the Senses Series

The Westminster Law and Theory Lab is developing the Law and the Senses series, a project involving publishing five small edited book (University of Westminster Press), one for each sense, both available for free download as epub as well as sold in print, on demand, as “pocket size” (178mm x 111mm).

Read a small online issue

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Disgrace

 Literary Hub has posted three of the first reviews of J.M Coetzee's1999 Booker prize-winning novel Disgrace. The novel tells the story of David Lurie, a divorced university professor in his fifties, who falls into disgrace after being accused of sexual misconduct with one of his students. It is about ruin and salvation.

I'm going to pull it off the bookshelf and reread it in the light cast by recent sexual harrassment allegations.

Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth House For sale

The Richmond home where Leonard and Virginia Woolf established Hogarth Press has hit the market, on the centenary of the fabled publishing house.
The Woolfs moved into Hogarth House on Paradise Road in 1915, and established their publishing empire from its drawing room in 1917. The iconic press published works by leading Modernist thinkers of the age, including the Woolfs, T S Eliot, John Middleton Murray and Sigmund Freud.

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On this day in 1850, writer Robert Louis Stevenson was born

He authored Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and A Child’s Garden of Verses.

Rain
The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea. 

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)

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Alan Bennett: The Time I Saw T.S. Eliot on a Train Platform

Legendary playwright Alan Bennett writes about his brush with the great poet.

It was at this point the train came in and after most of the passengers had cleared there came a small procession headed by the friendly lady, whom I now recognized as Mrs. Fletcher, a customer at my father’s butcher’s shop, followed by her daughter Valerie pushing a wheelchair with, under a pile of rugs, her husband T.S. Eliot.

More: Literary Hub

Related: Are you a fan of Alan Bennett? Perhaps you'd like to live in his house: Alan Bennett's 'Lady in the Van' house in Camden for sale.

That first book

But that’s the thing about the first book, the second book, or even, should you be lucky enough, the 17th book: There’s always the question of the next book — where it will come from, what it will be, and what will become of it…

Read more: Austin Kleon's notes on writing

The 1885 Reviews of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The San Francisco Chronicle reviewed Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on March 15, 1885:

What can be said of a man of Mr. Clemens’s wit, ability and position deliberately imposing upon an unoffending public a piece of careless hackwork in which a few good things are dropped amid a mass of rubbish, and concerning which he finds it necessary to give notice that ‘persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot’?

Read more: Literary Hub

Elena Ferrante's Naples – a photo essay

In her Neapolitan novels Elena Ferrante maps out in vivid detail every corner of the unnamed “neighbourhood” where her fictional heroines Lenu and Lila grow up, and when the characters move into the rest of the city she is meticulous in naming each street and square, allowing Naples to take centre stage as the stories develop.

This photo essay follows in the footsteps of Lenu and Lila into the alleyways, gritty apartment blocks and piazzas of Naples.
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The Model Book of Calligraphy (1561–1596)

Pages from a remarkable book entitled Mira calligraphiae monumenta (The Model Book of Calligraphy), the result of a collaboration across many decades between a master scribe, the Croatian-born Georg Bocskay, and Flemish artist Joris Hoefnagel.

More: The Public Domain Review

“Slang in America,” an essay by Walt Whitman

Language is more like some vast living body, or perennial body of bodies. And slang not only brings the first feeders of it, but is afterward the start of fancy, imagination and humor, breathing into its nostrils the breath of life.

Read more: Biblioklept

On the origin of time travel in fiction

Drawing from David Wittenberg’s book, Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative, as a guide, Evan Puschak goes in search of the origins of time travel in fiction.



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Letters to the Lady Upstairs by Marcel Proust – digested read

John Crace writes incisive pastiches of popular writers for The Guardian. This week's Digested Read is Letters to the Lady Upstairs by Marcel Proust, a charming, funny, poignant collection of twenty-three letters from Marcel Proust to his upstairs neighbour.

"I thank you with all my heart for the deep consideration you have shown me in limiting the noise that your builders are making, but I urge you strongly to encourage them to make as much noise as possible between the hours of 3pm and 5pm next Tuesday, for at that time I shall be taking myself to visit the doctor, providing I am not too unwell to leave the house, in which case I shall have to beg you for absolute silence, as I am unable to work if there is the slightest movement above my head, for footsteps bring to mind the childhood anxiety of hearing Maman walking outside my bedroom door and not knowing whether she would step inside to kiss me goodnight."

I bought this for my husband for his birthday and look forward to reading it myself.

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Redux: Joan Didion, William Faulkner, and Matthew Zapruder

To celebrate the release of the Netflix documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, the Paris Review brings you their 1978 Art of Fiction interview with the writer—plus a Halloween ghost story from William Faulkner and a haunted poem by Matthew Zapruder.

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A Revolutionary Cookbook

When people search for ways to resist injustice and express support for civil rights, environmental protections, and more, they begin by gathering around the table to talk and plan. These dishes foster community and provide sustenance for the mind and soul. Feed the Resistance: Recipes Ideas for Getting Involved by Julia Turshen includes stimulating lists, extensive resources, and essays from activists in the worlds of food, politics, and social causes.

Bark, Who Goes There?

It seems that, as readers, our literary hearts seem to lie firmly with  furry friends of the canine variety.  This article is about some of our favourite literary hounds from Buck in Call of the Wild to Stephen King's Kojak.

The Handbook of Japanese Beans

Food writer Kiyomi Hasegawa traversed Japan to bring you this typology of Japanese beans.The book's beautiful design is  by Azusa Kawaji.

More: Spoon &Tamago

The Wines of Gala

Last published in 1978, The Wines of Gala is Salvador Dali’s eccentric guide to wine grapes and their origin. Published by Taschen with over 140 appropriated artworks and collages collected and created by Dali, it is now available for pre-order.

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Gramar Explaned

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