NPR’s “Voice of Books” Alan Cheuse talks to FWR about being a writer, critic, and teacher–and he shares the story behind his latest book, To Catch the Lightning, a novelization of the life and work of photographer Edward Curtis.
Slate’s review: “Digital readers will save writers and publishing, even if they destroy the book business.” Thanks for the link, Celeste, and for the word “Kindling.”
Join me tonight at NYC’s Rattlestick Theater for Versus, a series of short plays about competition by FWR contributor Brian Bartels. And if you haven’t yet, check out Brian’s essay “Waiting on Normal Mailer” on FWR.
What book would you take out to dinner? For the New York Times, Leanne Shapton asked a dozen authors to share their ideal dining companions. (Thanks, Kathryn, for the link.) Me, I’d treat Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? to La Lunchonette and a musical. It eats brains and knows all the lyrics.
Celeste just turned me on to TED — or Technology, Entertainment, Design; on their website, this organization offers videos of more than 200 lectures by VIPs from a wide swath of industries and arts. Here’s a sampling of talks by writers: – Dave Eggers describes his experience working with 826 Valencia, encouraging creative people everywhere to get involved with public schools. – Amy Tan explores “where creativity is hiding.” – Isabel Allende discusses passion, creativity, and definitions of feminism. – Elizabeth Gilbert gives a lecture on “genius” and creativity.
Indu Sundaresan’s fourth book and first story collection, In the Convent of Little Flowers, contains India’s multitudes, all in relationships of opposition – men vs. women, traditional vs. new, haves vs. have-nots. Throughout these nine stories, Sundaresan cultivates empathy for her characters and their individual anguish at straddling those great divides.
In the latest The Quarterly Conversation, William Patrick Wend’s “Intro to E-Lit: How Electronic Literature Makes Printed Literature Richer” discusses N. Katherine Hayles’ book Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary and defends e-publishing. Slate‘s Farhad Manjoo loves the Kindle but fears it’s bad news for the current publishing industry. Booksquare argues that the text-to-speech verdict, supposedly a win by Authors Guild (who aggressively pursued this issue), might (ironically) benefit Amazon the most in the end. Check out her earlier post on e-book pricing. The latest Kindle news is at Kindlebuzz, and folks are talking about nothing else at KindleBoards.
Weighing in on this question for the Guardian are authors A.L. Kennedy, Amit Chaudhuri, Hari Kunzru, John Banville, Will Self, Joyce Carol Oates, Geoff Dyer, Ronan Bennett, and Julie Myerson. I identify most with Hari Kunzru‘s take; yes to the freak-out and self-disgust but also the “spinning words like plates…”: I get great pleasure from writing, but not always, or even usually. Writing a novel is largely an exercise in psychological discipline – trying to balance your project on your chin while negotiating a minefield of depression and freak-out. Beginning is daunting; being in the middle makes you feel like […]
For the NY Times, Leah Price takes a look at Changing Lives Through Literature, “an alternative sentencing program that allows felons and other offenders to choose between going to jail or joining a book club. […] [C]riminals who have been granted probation in exchange for attending, and doing the homework for, six twice-monthly seminars on literature.”
This week’s New Yorker has an excellent piece on David Foster Wallace, on his struggles with depression and with writing The Pale King, the unfinished novel he left behind. Wallace’s wife found several thousand pages of the work in progress in their garage after his death. The book (a partial manuscript) will be published posthumously by Little, Brown next year; D.T. Max (writer of the New Yorker piece) describes it as about “a group of employees at an Internal Revenue Service center in Illinois, and how they deal with the tediousness of their work.” Here are some manuscript pages from […]
