New Yorker Magazine; Fiction; Keywording
You’re reading a novel. “What’s it about?” somebody asks. What do you say? The question grates; there’s no good answer for it, no easy way to address it. Book reviewers who are trained to avoid all but the briefest sketch … Continue reading →
Seven Things I Think I Think About Book Reviews
Last Sunday I took part in a panel at the Writer’s Center titled “The Future of the Book Review,” joined by the Washington Post‘s Dennis Drabelle and the Washington Independent Review of Books‘ David O. Stewart. In advance of the … Continue reading →
#fictionpulitzergate
“There’s something amiss,” fumed Michael Cunningham, one of the three members of the Pulitzer Prize fiction jury whose work was undone—or at least unsettled—by the Pulitzer board, which couldn’t pick a winner. People look to awards to either settle a … Continue reading →
Some Housekeeping Notes
1. Ron Slate, who runs the thoughtful blog Above the Seawall, invited me and 11 other writers to recommend a recent work of fiction. I wrote about Lionel Shriver‘s new novel, The New Republic, which you may have heard is … Continue reading →
A Novel Is a Pattern
Colm Toibin: The novel is not a moral fable or a tale from the Bible, or an exploration of the individual’s role in society; it is not our job to like or dislike characters in fiction, or make judgments on … Continue reading →
The Discipline of Form and the Love of an Educated Heart
From a 1959 essay, “Epitaph for the Beat Generation,” included the new anthology of John Leonard‘s essays, Reading for My Life: [The Beats] proved at least one thing more. That poetry, painting, music, and fiction are products of the individual. … Continue reading →
The World Is Already Filled to Bursting
Lawrence Weschler on why he doesn’t write fiction: [T]he part of my sensibility which I demonstrate in nonfiction makes fiction an impossible mode for me. That’s because for me the world is already filled to bursting with interconnections, interrelationships, consequences, … Continue reading →
An Interesting Neutrality
In the Wall Street Journal, Lee Sandlin discusses two hard-boiled crime authors whose work has recently been anthologized, Paul Cain and David Goodis. I’m pretty familiar with Goodis, but Cain (no relation to James M.) is new to me. Sandlin … Continue reading →
Loved and Outgrew, Hated and Admired Later
Helen DeWitt, at a reporter’s prompting, lists some of the books she most likes to return to: Rereading is important for writers because people in the publishing industry constantly give advice couched in terms of helping the reader. If you … Continue reading →
Everybody’s Doing It
The Los Angeles Review of Books has a lengthy piece on self-published authors and how difficult it can be for them to get review attention. I’m quoted in it a couple of times, repeating what’s been a stock line for … Continue reading →
Sentence Form
Since last fall Tin House‘s blog has been running a recurring series called “The Art of the Sentence,” in which various writers celebrate a particular line they admire in a work of fiction. The choices and commentary are hit and … Continue reading →
Getting Away With It
Joseph O’Neill considers Philip Roth‘s late novels in the Atlantic (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, and The Human Stain; have been collected in a new volume from the Library of America): Much of the action in these novels takes … Continue reading →
