Dr. Seuss’s World War II editorial cartoons: “Because of the fame of his children’s books (and because we often misunderstand these books) and because his political cartoons have remained largely unknown, we do not think of Dr. Seuss as a political cartoonist. But for two years, 1941-1943, he was the chief editorial cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM (1940-1948), and for that journal he drew over 400 editorial cartoons.”
On Paul Krugman’s love of SF: ‘I read [Isaac Asimov’s] Foundation back when I was in high school, when I was a teenager,’ says Krugman in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, 'and thought about the psychohistorians, who save galactic civilization through their understanding of the laws of society, and I said “I want to be one of those guys.” And economics was as close as I could get.’
Two videos dramatizing the Birth and the Decline of a Book: One video on the birth of a book (using old-school printing methods), and a second on the decline (with a focus on the science behind the aroma of used books).
The author’s response to criticism as literary genre by Paul Fussell: “Some authors are so sensitive in their reputation part that in their view a hostile notice implicates not just the one who writes it but also the editor who prints it. Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman, tells of lunching amiably with H. G. Wells. The same week his journal had published a savage review of Wells’s latest novel. 'On Monday morning I found a card from H. G. which began: "So you really had that stinker up your sleeve when you greeted me so warmly last Tuesday,” and ended by saying that I was a cad.’“
Franzen on the four most common unpleasant questions authors get asked: "The second perennial question is: What time of day do you work, and what do you write on?
This must seem, to the people who ask it, like the safest and politest of questions. I suspect that it’s the question people ask a writer when they can’t think of anything else to ask. And yet to me it’s disturbingly personal and invasive. It forces me to picture myself sitting down at my computer every morning at eight o'clock: to see objectively the person who, as he sits down at his computer in the morning, wants only to be a pure, invisible subjectivity. When I’m working, I don’t want anybody else in the room, including myself.”
VIDEO: Vonnegut’s ten rules for how to write a short story