A diary kept by Yukio Mishima in the 1940’s, now on display at a museum in Japan, suggests that the Japanese writer based his most famous work partly on his own experiences: Mishima described in detail his efforts to become a novelist, his relations with another famous novelist, Osamu Dazai, and his reunion with a woman believed to be the . . .
John Berger (Ways of Seeing) has returned to London for a month-long celebration of his work. In an interview at the Guardian, he tosses out this observation on shared smoke breaks: ‘A cigarette’, he says, inhaling deeply, ‘is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis. The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared you are . . .
At Crooked Timber, John Holbo announces his latest project: I know this doesn’t sound healthy, but I’ve, I’ve … started a blog: a literary studies group blog. It’s called the Valve and it just got turned on.
Tod Goldberg used the same author photo for his first two novels. While mulling over the photo possibilities for his third book, he’s “run across the very disturbing trend of authors trying to either look like their characters, or, worse, authors looking like strung out real estate agents.” He posts “a few notably bad author photos,” with descriptions like: Granted, . . .
Like most of the bars in [expurgated] after 11:30 p.m., Kurt Vonnegut doesn’t give a damn about New York City’s smoking ban. Especially not when he just wants a smoke in a public park on a fine, sunny afternoon. In the Telegraph, Mark Sanderson says: “The latest annual sales figures from Nielsen BookScan reveal why so many authors are taking . . .