Pablo Picasso to Gertrude Stein, 1919. Can’t quite read it all—messy handwriting! Very cool, though.
The inside cover and first page of the notebook containing the first draft of James Salter’s 1975 novel, Light Years. (via vintageanchorbooks)
Also from the Salter archives at the Harry Ransom Center, read the novel’s outline here.
“Books are furniture.”
One of the many perks of working here would be the postcards we receive from readers.
Here are your 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners:
Fiction: The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
History: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall
Biography: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
Poetry: Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds
General Nonfiction: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
Michael Pollan on Restaurant Culture
From his in-depth Q&A in New York
Adam Platt: What’s your view on restaurant culture these days? Do you eat out a lot?
Michael Pollan: Probably once or twice a week. I think restaurant culture has gotten really decadent and way too precious. If I have to have another fourteen-course meal where I have to listen to a waiter give me the recipe before every course and interrupt my conversation with the friend I’m with, or with my wife—I’m just so tired of that.
Adam Platt: Join the crowd.
Michael Pollan: I really like simpler food, and I really like restaurants that leave you alone. What satisfies me is simple food really well prepared—and prepared with conviction. I’m a little tired of restaurant culture, and I really like to cook. And, this sounds weird, but I sort of feel we’re being deprived of the pleasure of cooking. There are a lot of people, in corporate cooking and restaurant culture, telling us, “No, let us cook for you.”
“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
