In recent years, there has been an “Against [X]” epidemic: against young-adult literature, against interpretation, against method, against theory, against epistemology, against happiness, against transparency, againstambience, against heterosexuality, against love, against exercise, etc. The form announces a polemic—probably a cranky one, and very likely an unfair one. But an essay with such a title has inoculated itself against the criticism of being too polemical or tendentious—after all,did you read the title? Caveat lector!
Karl Ove Knausgård: Story without Climax
The Min Kamp books caused massive controversy when they were released, partly because the Norwegian title of the book, Min Kamp, is the same as Hitler‘s Mein Kampf, and partly because some have suggested Knausgård goes too far in exposing the private lives of his friends and family, including his ex-wife. The books have nevertheless received almost universally favourable reviews, especially the first two volumes, and were, even before the final book’s publication, one of the greatest publishing phenomena in Norway ever. In a country of fewer than five million people, the Min Kamp series has sold over 450,000 copies.[4]
Turn Footnotes into Sidenotes
Side Matter turns footnotes into sidenotes, magically aligning each note in the sidebar next to its corresponding reference in the text. Unlike hyperlinked footnotes, sidenotes don’t require jumping down the page to follow up on each reference; instead, they perch humbly and accessibly beside the material to which they refer.
What Writers Can Learn From ‘Goodnight Moon’
How wonderful that this oddly compassionate moment, where even nobody gets a good night, shows up in the picture book that is the most popular! There is no template, ever. When writing, how do we allow those moments of impulse, of surprise? How do we not censor that kind of leap? (I’d argue for following tangents — for not feeling bound to the topic at hand.) And when to end a story or poem or novel or essay? It’s one of the most common questions at readings: “How do you know when it’s done?”
.. The reader has time to linger with that end and accept it — it’s not the obvious closing note of the music, it’s not the fully resolved major chord. But she trusted it. How something ends is so much about a writer training her own instinct and her own sense of that note.