Fiction & the hierarchy of language education in India
Is Amitava Kumar’s Home Products the first English-language novel to be written in conversation with Hindi?
Is Amitava Kumar’s Home Products the first English-language novel to be written in conversation with Hindi?
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 buy the things. Publishers used . . .
R.I.P. Barry Hannah. His reluctant rules for writing. Crews on Hannah. 2008 profile. Paris Review interview. 1993 audio interview. Three-bean soup. His protégé, Jack Pendarvis.
In November, I learned that Maude Newton Simmons, my great-great aunt and (self-given) namesake, was a teacher, an architectural drafter, and a dealer of King Midget cars. The 1977 Delta Democrat-Times profile I unearthed even included a photograph of her, at 92, looking out the window of her strange and delightful little vehicle. Shortly after posting about the article, I typed . . .