Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘History’

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Shout-Out: Erika Dreifus on remembering the Munich Olympics

by Celeste Ng

Over at The Jewish Daily Forward, FWR Contributing Editor Erika Dreifus has written a moving piece about the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics of 1972 and how this event found their way into her fiction. Erika writes about how her classmates challenged her use of this history: When I workshopped “Homecomings,” several classmates thought that my inclusion of the 1972 Munich Olympics was extraneous. The story of Jewish refugees returning to their homeland was “powerful enough,” they argued. My story “didn’t need” the added layer of history I’d given it. Incredulous, I broke the cardinal workshop rule […]


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Mommy, where do blurbs come from?

by Celeste Ng

The always-fascinating TYWKIWDBI points us to the origin of the blurb. According to Wikipedia, The word blurb originated in 1907. American humorist Gelett Burgess’s short 1906 book Are You a Bromide? was presented in a limited edition to an annual trade association dinner. The custom at such events was to have a dust jacket promoting the work and with, as Burgess’ publisher B. W. Huebsch described it, “the picture of a damsel — languishing, heroic, or coquettish — anyhow, a damsel on the jacket of every novel” In this case the jacket proclaimed “YES, this is a ‘BLURB’!” and the […]


Reviews |

Journal of the Week: Lapham's Quarterly

by Carolyn Gan

Our latest Journal of the Week, Lapham’s Quarterly, is a true curator of culture. By juxtaposing the old and the new, Carolyn Gan says in this profile, it’s the “literary equivalent of a really good mix tape, where obscure songs of various styles come together to tell you something more about the music.”



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