As the lover of crime fiction knows, you can’t write about the dead without the deadpan; you can’t lose sight of the fact that the more unthinkable a thing is, the more certain that it has happened a million times before and will go on happening forever.
And also on a Dave Eggers note: boy, he’s changed his mind, hasn’t he?
Bebe Moore Campbell, a best-selling author who wrote with compassion and candor about social issues from the African American perspective, died Monday. She was 56.
Hello, WHY are none of Nemirovsky’s other works available in English?
What was important was that Benjamin was breaking the code that defines the artist-patron relationship: The artist is to be charming until excused.
I’m helping preside over the utter and irreversible canonization of one of my (formerly outsider) heroes, Philip K. Dick.
At some point recently, a book critic told me about the page 99 rule, ascribing it to John Berryman. The rule is this: skip to page 99, read it, and if the writing or scene grabs you, chances are, it’s worth beginning. If not, toss it.
A large serving of via Maud: Kingsley and Martin Amis once had a good row about the word ‘dilapidated’ (for the record, I am with Kingsley on this one), and Gore Vidal hates on Fitzgerald, here and here.