Anthony Burgess, Jerzy Kosinski, and Barbara Howar ask talk show host Dick Cavett about writing and reviews as his book (published in 1974) appears. “I don’t know why we have to suffer reviews,” says Burgess, who reveals that he once wrote five and a half books in twelve months when he believed he had one year to live. “Reviews don’t . . .
Harold Bloom says Samuel Johnson, who identified with Falstaff, himself seems like a character from Shakespeare.
For Alan Bennett, like a Borges character, “All the books he ever published filled him with a complex feeling of repentance.”
Below writer Novella Carpenter answers Phil Campbell’s questions about her book, Farm City, which Dwight Garner calls “consistently involving” and “a serious, if tragicomic, meditation on raising and then killing your own animals.” The author has a couple of events in New York City this week, at the Horticultural Society and Vox Pop. You can see photos of some of . . .