My contribution to The Awl’s Year in Advice series includes many tips from Muriel Spark’s A Far Cry from Kensington, most notably how to shake off (and not to be) a pisseur de copie. A selection: His writings, she says, “writhed and ached with twists and turns and tergiversations, inept words, fanciful repetitions, far-fetched verbosity and long, Latin-based words. … . . .
I admire Justin Taylor’s short fiction but haven’t read his novel, The Gospel of Anarchy, because the book I’m still working on is also about religion and takes place largely in Gainesville, and though his sounds different and is set quite a few years later I didn’t want to steal anything or to second-guess myself or my work any more . . .
Unlike so many other people in our city, Max and I are fine. Heartbroken, but fine, and fully powered up. Like everyone else in our situation, I’m looking to volunteer and help out however I can. If I could lift 50 pounds, I’d be signing up for the next possible Red Cross volunteer training class. Instead I’ve signed up with . . .
It’s hard to think of anyone who writes about drinking with more authority, finesse, and psychological sensitivity than the late Kingsley Amis, who could, no surprise, really put it away. His first editor, Hilary Rubenstein, found it implausible that the protagonist of Lucky Jim could drink ten pints of beer at the pub in a single evening, but that, as . . .