A few months ago, we rounded up some of the strangest day jobs of beloved authors had before they were famous — and in the process discovered that William S. Burroughs was once an exterminator in Chicago, William Faulkner served as the postmaster at Ole Miss, and John Steinbeck ran a fish hatchery in Lake Tahoe. Today, we discovered that if Joan Didion had possessed the necessary science credits, she would have preferred to probe the depths of the ocean as opposed to those of the human psyche.
“I wanted to be an oceanographer, actually,” she reveals to Sheila Heti in in the February issue of The Believer. “And when I was out of school and living in New York and working for a magazine, I actually went out to the Scripps Institute, which is now UC San Diego, but then it was just the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, run by the University of California, and I asked them what I would have to do to become an oceanographer. And basically they said I would have to go back to high school, you know. I hadn’t taken any of the science courses that would enable me to take the science courses that I would need to take in order to go to… any place. So I abandoned the idea of being an oceanographer, but I can see myself still as an oceanographer, if I could get to that point.”
So, in case it ever comes up, now you know the one thing that Joan Didion has in common with 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy.
Earlier this week, Vol. 1 Brooklyn ran a post about the telling nature of literary tote bags which we couldn’t help but love over here at Flavorpill. And, since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we decided to do a spin-off for today. Are you ready for a brief follow-up quiz, readers? We certainly hope so.
1. The nominations for the 65th annual Tony Awards were announced this morning, and — no surprise here! — The Book of Mormon leads all other productions with 14 nods. [via WSJ]
2. Did you miss watching Will Ferrell become “rock hard” as he finally made good on his promise to shave off Conan O’Brien‘s beard last night? View the full clip (which opens with Ferrell snarling, “I don’t even know who you are. I just look at that thing and want to attack it!”) here.
3. The sixth annual Believer Book Award has gone to Next by James Hynes. Click here to read a brief excerpt of his novel, which the lit mag describes as “nothing less than a state-of-the-art Mrs. Dalloway.”
4. In case you’re wondering what’s going on with the plastic wrapped bronze heads near Central Park: Following Sunday evening’s news that Osama bid Laden had been killed, the official opening of Ai Weiwei’s public art project was delayed until tomorrow morning because Mayor Bloomberg had to deliver a speech. [via WYNC]
5. And now for some shocking news: For the first time in 20 years, the number of American homes with televisions has gone down. Now, because of both poverty and the Internet, only 96.7 percent of American households now own sets. [via Gawker]
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of great books are published every year. But only a few novels (and not always the best ones) make a splash in the mainstream press. That is why we’re such big fans of The Believer‘s annualBook Award, which spotlights the year’s “strongest and most underappreciated” works of fiction. While we won’t know the winner until May, here’s the small press-heavy 2010 shortlist — which we heartily co-sign:
The extremely unconventional 36th issue of McSweeney’s quarterly magazine is a box-shaped head filled with short stories, art postcards, a “lost” work by Michael Chabon, and a tiny scroll.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius author Dave Eggers founded McSweeney’s independent publishing house as a forum for indie literary-fiction authors to articulate progressive ideas. Issue 36 is a “275-cubic-inch full-color head-crate” filled with booklets and other objects, ripe for the sifting.
In the 2009 art issue of The Believer, forensic artist Barbara Anderson sketches eight notorious literary criminals, working from the (often scant) details found in such classics as Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (see Raskolnikov above).
Do you think the image matches up with Dostoevsky’s description? “He was, by the way, exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim, well-built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair … his face was pale and distorted.” We prefer the visual of Peter Lorre in the 1935 film version. Much better hair.
Benjamin Kunkel’s lauded debut novel, Indecision, chronicled the quarter-life crisis of a privileged twentysomething New Yorker with crackerjack wit — and, in doing so, diagrammed a belated coming-of-age scenario typical of our times. There’s no evidence the author has succumbed to the same paralysis afflicting his main character, however as Kunkel is co-founder of ambitious biannual journal n+1, as well as contributor to such pubs as The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Dissent, and The Believer. About a year ago, Kunkel chucked life in Manhattan and headed south for Buenos Aires. On a recent visit back to the States, he met us poolside at the Angeleno to chat about n+1, the ins-and-outs of the Prius, and a strange afternoon with Joan Didion. Read More »
In case you haven’t heard, it’s summer, which means it’s time for all of the “beach reads” to come out of hibernation. With lists of what you should and shouldn’t read out on the sands popping up everywhere (we even threw out some suggestions of our own), it was all the more funny when we ran across Steve Hely’s list of “eleven essential, imaginary beach reads for summer” from the June issue of The Believer. Find our favorite one, along with a Flavorpill addition to their roundup, after the jump. Read More »
The Fiction Fix is your weekly dose of short story. If that’s not your drug of choice, too bad: consider it medicine. Every week, we’ll scour the literary magazines you don’t have time to read, online and in print, and let you know where to find one story worth reading.
This week, we’re recommending Michael Cera’s Pinecone in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #30. Yes, that Michael Cera. Although we love pointing you toward mostly-unknown writers in literary magazines that are not available on Amazon or in your local Barnes & Noble, we are endorsing this story because maybe you decided a long time ago you were over McSweeney’s, or maybe you roll your eyes when a movie star gets literary. If so, get over yourself. Read More »
Written English is in danger, but not necessarily for the reasons you assume. Warring parties of grammarians, teachers, literacy activists, and politicians are addressing widespread linguistic changes by debating the risks and rewards of the language’s inevitable evolution. And yet, shifting conventions — whether perceived as beneficial or detrimental — don’t actually herald a literary apocalypse. Rather, the threat lies in the misapprehended implication that language and its written rules are static entities that can be regulated in tangible ways.
, chronicled the quarter-life crisis of a privileged twentysomething New Yorker with crackerjack wit — and, in doing so, diagrammed a belated coming-of-age scenario typical of our times. There’s no evidence the author has succumbed to the same paralysis afflicting his main character, however as Kunkel is co-founder of ambitious biannual journal 
