Killings brings you our fortnightly selection of posts that have amused, enlightened and generally distracted us from our writing.
Joan Didion’s new memoir Blue Nights will be out in November, this is a lovely essay and interview with her in New York magazine.
An amusing list (not to mention reassuring for all aspiring writers!) over on Flavorwire – the day jobs of famous authors.
New York Times on Don Quixote, the importance of fiction and how it affects the way we experience the world.
‘What I’d ask is that you not copyedit this like a freshman essay.’ David Foster Wallace’s cover letter to Harper’s Magazine, or why David Foster Wallace doesn’t like editors.
Interesting piece on Crikey on the politics of subtitling and the way subtitles are used to make those who speak English fluently, though with an accent, appear ‘not only unintelligible but also deficient and illegitimate’.
The London branch of the ‘Occupy’ movement has created ‘Star Books’ – an improvised lending library with books donated from authors and supporters.
The Hairpin decodes the language of film reviews – what reviewers really mean when they say a film is a ‘tour de force’ and other cliches.