Fiction and autobiography edition, featuring Somerset Maugham, Alexander Chee, Joan Didion, Jean Rhys, and Graham Greene, and (semi-estranged) half-sisters AS Byatt and Margaret Drabble “Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that, looking back, I can hardly distinguish one from the other.” — Somerset Maugham (in video above) “I sat down to write a conventionally autobiographical novel. . . .
Adam Levin discusses some novels that influenced him. The Roth and Wallace are no surprise, but it was a revelation to find Kosinski’s (riveting, controversial) The Painted Bird on the list.
Can a novelist write philosophically? Even some of those considered among the most philosophical have “answered with an emphatic no.” See also Percy & Kierkegaard.
“Writing is a fearsome but grand vocation—potentially healing but likewise deadly. I wouldn’t trade my life for the world.” — Reynolds Price (February 1, 1933 – January 20, 2011)