Letters From Here

Terms such as “book” or “graphic novel” fail miserably at labeling the latest creation of cartoonist-cum-wizard Chris Ware. His Building Stories (Pantheon) may well be a high watermark for print culture: open the boardgame-sized box to discover 14 discrete books, booklets, magazines, newspapers, and pamphlets that comprise an infinitely satisfying choose-your-own-graphic-adventure.

Meanwhile, having spent twelve years working sporadically on the project, Ware is the picture of modesty, describing Building Stories as “follow[ing] the inhabitants of a three-flat Chicago apartment house: a 30-year-old woman who has yet to find someone with whom to spend the rest of her life; a couple (possibly married) who wonder if they can bear each other’s company for another minute; and finally, an elderly woman who never married and is the building’s landlady.”

Trust us, there’s more. Last week, Ware joined fellow story builder Zadie Smith, whose latest novel is NW (Penguin), for a conversation at the New York Public Library. Pour yourself a fresh cup of nog, sit back, and enjoy the below audio recording of the two discussing the role of space and place in their work.

The audio is here.

Internet Communities – Virtual Reality

At this point in the 21st century, it’s kind of impossible to talk about community-building without, at some point, talking about the internet. The way we meet people, establish connections, maintain our relationships and fight for what we believe in has been radically transformed by the web—and it’s still transforming.

But often, when we’re talking about these changes, the focus is either on pure enthusiasm about the possibilities presented by the limitlessness of the web, or anxiety about online connections replacing physical ones. With this episode of SOTRU, we tell stories of the internet’s impact on community-building in human terms, on the messy level of people’s daily existence, where its effects are rarely solely positive or negative.

In each of these stories, we look at a different way the internet has slipped into our interactions with one another, from wholesale social transformations facilitated by the web, to individual lives reconfigured, to more minor everyday happenings.This is an hour of exploring how the “virtual” has turned into the “real” in people’s lives.

This is a space for you to exercise your sixth sense and tell us about your place. What connects you to it? What history does it hold for you? What are your hopes and fears for it? What do you do to protect it, or prepare it for the future, or make it better? A few of the contributions we receive will appear in the print edition of Orion. The Place Where You Live will be published in every issue of Orion (as well as online), so submissions will be considered for the print magazine on a rolling basis.