When I travel, I love to catch up on magazine reading. But a pile of 9-15 magazines is both heavy and impractical since I can’t shed then if I want to save articles. So I came up with this idea to cut out the articles I wanted to read using an Xacto knife, papercliping then together then sticking them in a manilla folder. Light, compact and easy to ditch when done reading. Worked like a charm.
Here’s what I read.
- Creative Nonfiction had a great interview with Kathryn Harrison whose controversial 19976 memoir The Kiss about an incestuous relationship with her father brought her to prominence. Harrison has been on a tear since then writing six novels, four memoirs and a biography in the last 15 years. I don’t think I’ll ever match that rate of productivity but one can dream.
- My friend Jennifer Egan was on the cover of last month’s issue of Poets & Writers. She’s got a new novel out, her third, called The Keep, which I just started reading.
- My friend Adam Mansback has a great article in the same issue about putting together an anthology with his friend and fellow writer T Cooper. T he book is called A Fictional History of the United States WIth Huge Chunks Missing which sounds great and I will buying right quick.
- Great piece in the Columbia Journalism Review about why editors steer reporters away from “depressing stories.”
- A rather sobering book review by Larry McMurtry about the history of “ethnic cleansing” in Texas. McMurtry takes issue with the author’s characterization that the Texas Ranger were largely a band of thugs deputized to toss Indians and Mexicans out of the state. The way McMurtry makes his argument though, will shock you.
- From the same issue, a profile of Dick Cheney by Joan Didion which is as cooly lethal as being poisoned in your sleep. Didion paints Cheney as an opportunistic, intellectual lightweight so insecure of his own abilities that his career amounts to little more than grabs at the nearest stockpile of power. If you’re even a bit liberal leaning, it’s like catnip.
