NYC apartment living conducive to electronic books; or, where possible, please send galleys for iPad
At night, when I get home from work, or from whatever I’ve done after work, I open packages from publishers. Then I stack most of the books* along this wall, behind the dining room table and next to the liquor credenza. Classy, I know. But it’s an improvement.
At our old place, when the galleys [...]
Writers, who gets your digital remains?
What will happen to your email account, blog, or Twitter feed when you die?
New online lockboxes allow you to specify beforehand who’ll get your passwords, which private Flickr photos should be purged, and what final status should be posted at Facebook, but these services are no substitute for a will. And writers [...]
Nabokov’s The Original of Laura as performance art?
Vladimir Nabokov famously instructed his wife Vera to destroy his final, unfinished novel, The Original of Laura, if he didn’t live to complete it. At his death, the draft consisted of a stack of notecards which he’d shuffled through, added to, and rewritten right up until the end.
Vera, having once saved an early version [...]
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 [...]
Earbrass, LTD: Writers in search of reassignment?*
“First, try to be something, anything, else.” That’s the famous first line of Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer,” and it’s funny because it’s true. Many writers do consider another path initially.
Roberto Bolaño, for instance, wanted to be a spy, Kate Christensen a rock star, Joan Didion an actress. Chris Adrian went [...]
A curmudgeon’s literary paraphernalia
It has not always been so, but few aspects of online aspiring-writer culture are more irritating to me than “literary lifestyle” tips and paraphernalia. (Library-scented perfume. Dictionary wallpaper. Moleskines. Bookshelves fashioned of reference books pulled from library dumpsters. The onslaught is maddening.)
But every curmudgeon is at least something of a hypocrite, and I am [...]
The hopeful cover of Editor & Publisher
“Snagged this from my managing editor’s desk,” said a friend who works at a newspaper, following the announcement that Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews will be shuttered. “The teaser in the upper right… Oof.”
Empanelled! Also, questions and more questions.
I guess my cardigan and the cat hair I couldn’t lint-roll off of it must’ve screamed “truly, I have renounced every aspect of being an attorney,” but, in light of my background, I was surprised to be selected for a civil jury today.
Evidently the trial is an expedited, one-day affair. I’ll be at [...]
One for the reading list: The German Mujahid
Europa Editions, one of the most interesting and beautifully curated publishers of works in translation, has just put out Boualem Sansal’s The German Mujahid, a novel inspired by an Algerian mayor who was a former SS officer.
In an evocative review at Words Without Borders, Emma Garman calls Sansai “a novelist at the absolute [...]
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 [...]
Evolutionary (and writerly) advantages of depression?
Emma and I enjoyed the novelist Margaret Drabble’s recent observation that depression is useful “for stripping off ways of getting through life that prevent you from having to think.”
“Happy and buoyant don’t force you into action on the page,” Drabble (pictured, in an earlier era) told Daphne Merkin.
These kinds of arguments in favor of depression [...]
When is a book not a book?
Even as the printing press was taking hold, the Abbot of Sponheim urged his monks to keep copying texts by hand. The written word on parchment, he said, would last a thousand years, whereas words printed on paper were cheap and fleeting.
His argument has echoes in the ebooks debate. [...]
The lives — and books — of teenage girls
Today at The Second Pass, Emma Garman returns to Françoise Mallet-Joris’ The Illusionist and Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse, two compelling and remarkably amoral novels narrated — and written — by teenage girls in the middle of the last century.
The Illusionist centers on the protagonist’s affair with her father’s mistress, while [...]
Publishing and writers in the Great Depression
Amid all the discussion of massive layoffs and restructuring in publishing, I keep hoping someone will take a detailed look at how books fared during the Great Depression, and consider how the current economic crisis compares.
Conventional wisdom holds that books have done well in hard times, because they’re cheaper than [...]
Will e-books expand the trashy exposé market?
Late last week, a friend forwarded a press release entitled “Publication Date Set for ‘Manhattan Madam’ Tell-All EBook.” It announces that Kristin Davis’ “biographical peak inside NYC’s sex-industry” will go on sale February 20.
Says my friend, “‘EBook’ in the headline of the press release? Classy. But perhaps it’s shrewd — no shameful shuffling in the [...]