Readings

Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc. makes use of a familiar metaphor: the creative work as infant. But a familiar term raises the question: does the creative process require you to murder your darlings?

From Dexter and The Walking Dead to True Detective and Hannibal, our tastes for television are skewing darker; we’re losing ourselves not just in anti-heroes, but in horror itself. What are we really escaping into, though?

In this excerpt from The Bohemians, Ben Tarnoff examines the writing of a key work in Mark Twain’s transition from rakish journalist to literary giant, the short story “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog.”