Some Writing (& Such) Links

A handful of links to interesting writing (& such)-related things.

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1. The Powerful Density of Hypertextual Writing

What makes this piece so effective is its plain language and its information density. This density is a real strength of hypertext that is often overlooked and taken for granted. Only 110 words in that paragraph but it contains 27 links to other NYT opinion pieces published over the last several months that expand on each linked statement or argument. If you were inclined to follow these links, you could spend hours reading about how unfit Trump is for office.

2. Can Reading Make You Happier?

Several years ago, I was given as a gift a remote session with a bibliotherapist at the London headquarters of the School of Life, which offers innovative courses to help people deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence. I have to admit that at first I didn’t really like the idea of being given a reading “prescription.” I’ve generally preferred to mimic Virginia Woolf’s passionate commitment to serendipity in my personal reading discoveries, delighting not only in the books themselves but in the randomly meaningful nature of how I came upon them (on the bus after a breakup, in a backpackers’ hostel in Damascus, or in the dark library stacks at graduate school, while browsing instead of studying). I’ve long been wary of the peculiar evangelism of certain readers: You must read this, they say, thrusting a book into your hands with a beatific gleam in their eyes, with no allowance for the fact that books mean different things to people—or different things to the same person—at various points in our lives. I loved John Updike’s stories about the Maples in my twenties, for example, and hate them in my thirties, and I’m not even exactly sure why.

3. ‘A Writer’s Career Is Choppy – I Was 50 When I Found Success’

Deborah Levy is a presence, entering a cafe in north London with slightly wild hair, a large brooch at her throat and a Lime bike parked across the street, ready to convey her back up the hill after our interview. At 65, she has an appeal that is both literary and popular, with an intensity matched only by the devotion of her readers. In the first moments of our interview, Levy whips out her phone to show me a photo of a woman she met in Italy who, to Levy’s delight, had a tattoo on her upper arm of the French writer Marguerite Duras. “I don’t think I’d do it,” she says thoughtfully of the tattoo, but it seems to me there are women out there for whom a tattoo of Levy wouldn’t be a gesture too far.

4. Maximizing Time for Reading

Small amounts of time add up quickly. Even reading a single page, when accumulated in the downtime of a day, can turn into a whole chapter, and a whole book faster than you think. Before smartphones, I made it a habit to carry around a book with me, or in my car, that I could pop open when I had a few minutes to spare, like waiting for an oil change, or at a red light (to be honest I used to read while driving in traffic, tho I don’t recommend this). These days most people fill their empty space with social media, and I am no different, so the struggle to get back to reading instead of sucking up sludge is a bit different now, but still the same at base. Throw a book in your car that you only read when you find yourself waiting around. Put another book beside your toilet or your bathtub that you read when doing that. I’ve found I can pick a book that has shorter chapters or spaces for places where I’m likely to have short bursts of time is more conducive than picking one thick book to read consecutively no matter where I am.

5. Among the Sleuths: Looking for Answers at the Nancy Drew Convention

It was late evening, in early October, in the place that wears it best: Sleepy Hollow, of Headless Horseman fame. Our tour group of twenty or so was gathered in the town’s colossal cemetery, watching as our guide shined a flashlight over the figure of a woman, draped across a marble mausoleum. “She isn’t meant to be anybody in particular,” the guide explained. “That’s a mistake people often make—thinking she’s someone specific.”