October 15, 2018
Was Philip Roth a White Male Author?
It’s been four months now since Philip Roth died, long enough in our fast-paced media world that all the eloquent and moving obituaries have largely dissolved into a broader consensus […]
June 8, 2018
The Quest for the Enchanted Writing Tip
Many writers spend their whole careers chasing that enchanted writing tip that will make them extraordinary, and there’s certainly no shortage of craft advice. Some authors (I’m looking at you, […]
May 24, 2018
On “The Death of the Novel”
Declaring that the novel is dead sometimes feels like a pastime as old as the novel itself. Even men in the nineteenth century would lament how the novel was being […]
April 6, 2017
Concentration and Isolation: Edna O’Brien on the Writing Life
“Violence is her theme,” Colum McCann said of Edna O’Brien during a recent William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage event, which featured both authors in conversation. “Beauty, too.” McCann and […]
October 15, 2016
Bob Dylan Won the Nobel Prize [!/?]
Learning of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize in Literature this week, I found myself observing, as if from a great distance, the point that the Committee was making (oral and […]
May 7, 2015
How the West Inverted its Literary Values
In a true missing-the-forest-for-the-trees phenomenon, modern literary criticism has left unremarked, to my knowledge at least, the totally anomalous body of “great literature” that has come out of Europe and […]
February 20, 2013
William Styron’s Paper Skin, etc.
The top five surprises from the newly released Selected Letters of William Styron (Random House, 2012): 5. A yacht party with JFK and Jackie. In a letter to his father in […]
September 13, 2012
Mix Tape: Mindful Writing, Mindful Submitting
An interview with Dinty W. Moore on being a mindful writer. “There is nothing wrong with wanting a career, some recognition, a steady salary, and, most importantly perhaps, the access […]
June 30, 2011
Mix Tape: Be yourself. No one else can do it for you.
What did you say your name was again? The Last Book: a video interview with former Poet Laureate Donald Hall. Peer into a Gary Soto’s revision process by looking at […]
June 1, 2009
Location, Location, Location
Nabokov wrote The Real Life of Sebastian Knight under unusual circumstances. In a 1941 letter to Edmund Wilson (penned long before their famous feud), he tells his new friend, “I […]