Novelist Robert Stone Has Died, Anonymous Book Sculptor Interviewed, and More

by
Staff
1.12.15

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today's stories:

National Book Award–winning novelist Robert Stone died Saturday at age seventy-seven. Stone was known for his novels A Flag for Sunrise and Dog Soldiers, as well as his affiliation and friendship with authors Neal Cassady and Ken Kesey. (SF Gate)

“It’s no secret that I would like everyone to have access to books, art, artifacts and the buildings that house them.” Read an interview with the anonymous Scottish artist who has been leaving sculptures created from old books around Scotland for over three years. (BBC News)

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of poet T. S. Eliot’s death, and also marks the centenary of the first publication of Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” At the Guardian, Robert Crawford discusses his new biography of the author, titled Young Eliot, which “signals an intention to portray with detail and nuance the poet of The Waste Land—a figure who, some contend, was never young.”

A digital traffic sign in downtown Los Angeles was recently hacked to display a literary, albeit crude, command. (Los Angeles Weekly)

Former MIT professor Joseph Gibbons robbed a New York City bank on New Year’s Eve as part of an ongoing “art project,” citing French poet Arthur Rimbaud as inspiration for the wild heist. (New York Post)

Before becoming a great novelist, the young Leo Tolstoy kept a diary, which author Irina Paperno believes served as an “experimental project aimed at explaining the nature of self: the links connecting a sense of self, a moral ideal, and the temporal order of narrative.” (Salon)

Publisher Simon & Schuster has released a series of online video courses taught by popular authors. The courses, which range in price from $25 to $85, include workbooks and live question-and-answer sessions with the authors. (New York Times)