Kingsley Amis on whiskey, marvel of the Wild West
Further thoughts on everyday drinking, from Sir Kingsley Amis, who settles the question of regional whiskey spellings and marvels at the fortitude of the gunslingers of yore:
Whiskey in the USA has a long, colourful history. (Note that it is indeed spelt with an “e,” along with Irish whiskey — the Scotch and Canadian varieties are [...]
Hangover reading with Kingsley Amis
Excerpting Kingsley Amis’ Everyday Drinking at length in any discussion thereof is both crucial and inadequate: crucial because nothing anyone could say about it would be as entertaining as the text itself, and inadequate because the only way to convey how consistently funny it is would be to reproduce the book verbatim.
In their persistent [...]
Why Muriel Spark switched publishers
I’ve been gearing up for Martin Stannard’s Muriel Spark biography by revisiting (and reading more of) her own fiction, which was evidently treated as unsaleable for much of her career. In 1999, she told Janice Galloway:
“I used to be sold the idea that what I was writing was some little cult and people wouldn’t [...]
On the interconnectedness of stories and ideas
Iris Murdoch’s novels were deeply informed — if not consciously shaped — by her readings in philosophy. Walker Percy found a theoretical framework for his fiction in Kierkegaard, who also influenced Kafka.
And Donald Barthelme urged his students to choose their “literary fathers” carefully, and to be well-versed in philosophy. Hiding Man, Tracy [...]
Did Theodora Keogh, a favorite of Patricia Highsmith, write a novel satirizing The Paris Review?
Theodora (Roosevelt) Keogh, the mysterious novelist, ballet dancer, wildcat owner, chicken farmer, and president’s granddaughter whose fiction inspires comparisons to Colette, was living in Paris with her first husband, artist Tom Keogh, when The Paris Review started up in the early fifties.
As I mentioned in The Week this summer, Tom’s drawing of Keogh [...]
Outrage over the intrusion versus burning curiosity
I’m in the minority, I gather, but my favorite of Henry James’ novellas is probably The Aspern Papers, what with all the narrator’s scheming, the old woman’s secrecy, and the delicious melodrama of the finale. (The book centers on a biographer who’s determined to uncover a dead poet’s rumored love letters.)
So I got a kick [...]
Talent, power, and girls: Marie Mockett’s first novel
If you were riveted by her Letter from a Japanese Crematorium, you’ll be glad to hear that Marie Mockett’s first novel, Picking Bones from Ash, is out at last.
Judging from the advance reviews at Amazon, some readers seem to expect The Joy Luck Club, but for Japan, which is not at all the story they [...]
The silence of a falling star: on Hank Williams’ phrasing
Over the years I’ve developed a bad habit of going over sentences again and again in my fiction because they don’t quite sound right. By that I mean that the rhythm is off or the vowel sounds clash or an adjective is too bland or, worse, too “creative” in some [...]
Nobility of soul, at odds with circumstance
Around lunchtime Tuesday, email arrived from Philip Connors, one of my favorite writers whose work you may not know yet. (See, e.g., Why is writing an editorial like pissing yourself in a blue serge suit?)
“As a follower of your continuing family revelations, I have to say it pleases me [...]
Literary quips, observations, instructions & warnings #7
Fiction and the rest of life edition:
“I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn’t want to be a writer. I wanted to be an actress. I didn’t realize then that it’s the same impulse. It’s make-believe. It’s performance. The only difference being that a [...]
Skurnick on teen classics we never stopped reading
Shelf Discovery, inspired by my friend Lizzie Skurnick’s relentlessly entertaining Jezebel column, Fine Lines — “in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children’s and YA books we loved in our youth” — is just out.
The book collects Lizzie’s insights on classics [...]
Huxley packed light & would’ve love-hated the Internet
Lapham’s Quarterly reprints a great 1924 Aldous Huxley essay on travel reading.
The trick, he says, is to abandon the idea that you’re going to work your way through the Western canon on a two-week tour of France.
A perfect book to take along on a trip is one “of such a kind that one [...]
C.S. Lewis and the angel & devil on your shoulder
The other night Max and I were talking with his dad about C.S. Lewis, a writer whose ideas about religion and culture they’re both considerably more persuaded by than I am. (To say the least. Fortunately, my response to books like Mere Christianity has softened over the years into a sort of incredulous amusement.)
Because Max [...]
Greene, Waugh, and the force of warmth
Among the highlights of Graham Greene: A Life in Letters are the author’s Catholicism squabbles with Evelyn Waugh.
Here — to follow up on some recent thoughts about the melding of fact and invention in fiction — is an excerpt from a January 4, 1961, letter from Greene to Waugh. [...]
Literary quips, observations, and warnings #6
Many writers say that they write what they do because the novels they want to read don’t exist.
I don’t think about my own book quite that way, but to me one of the most frightening things about writing fiction is the corollary to this idea: namely, if you have an [...]