The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “letters”

How to Lower Your “Worryability”: Italo Calvino’s 1950 New Year’s Resolution
How to Lower Your “Worryability”: Italo Calvino’s 1950 New Year’s Resolution

“I would like this to signal the end of ‘wasted angst’ in my life.”

read article

The Love Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, with a Cameo by William S. Burroughs
The Love Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, with a Cameo by William S. Burroughs

“Life seems emptier without you, the soulwarmth isn’t around…”

read article

Hemingway on Not Writing for Free and How to Run a First-Rate Publication
Hemingway on Not Writing for Free and How to Run a First-Rate Publication

Find the best writers, pay them to write, and avoid typos at all costs.

read article

The 13 Best Biographies, Memoirs, and History Books of 2013
The 13 Best Biographies, Memoirs, and History Books of 2013

From Alan Turing to Susan Sontag, by way of a lost cat, a fierce Victorian lady-journalist, and some very odd creative habits.

read article

Voltaire on the Perils of Censorship, the Freedom of the Press, and the Rewards of Reading
Voltaire on the Perils of Censorship, the Freedom of the Press, and the Rewards of Reading

“The man of taste will read only what is good; but the statesman will permit both bad and good.”

read article

Jane Austen on Creative Integrity
Jane Austen on Creative Integrity

How to defend your creative vision against commercial pressure with graciousness, honor, and unflinching conviction.

read article

Ada Lovelace, the World’s First Computer Programmer, on Science and Religion
Ada Lovelace, the World’s First Computer Programmer, on Science and Religion

“Everything is naturally related and interconnected.”

read article

Einstein on Why We Are Alive
Einstein on Why We Are Alive

The meaning of human existence in five lines.

read article

Charles Dickens’s Heartening Fan Mail to George Eliot
Charles Dickens’s Heartening Fan Mail to George Eliot

“The exquisite truth and delicacy, both of the humour and the pathos of those stories, I have never seen the like of.”

read article

Europe, America, Utopia: Calvino on Hemingway
Europe, America, Utopia: Calvino on Hemingway

“In Hemingway one finds almost all of what was meant by America.”

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)