Philip Roth helps Houghton Mifflin out of a slump. The Miami New Times‘ Brett Sokol brings displaced Miamians like me regular doses of, ahem, South Florida literary and publishing culture. From the latest: “Call it what you will — mindless fluff, starstruck drivel — but Ocean Drive has perfected a formula that’s the envy of the publishing world.” Amy Bloom, . . .
As the University of Iowa auditions candidates to direct its prestigious writing program, students consider whether one of the four contenders, Ben Marcus, might reshape the program to favor the “avant-garde writing style” of his own fiction. The Des Moines Register reports that: Marcus, 37, the director of the fiction-writing program at Columbia University, said he doesn’t mold students’ writing . . .
From Russell Bradbury-Carlin‘s Hills Like Stuffed Tigers: Calvin Discovers Hemingway: I considered my friendship with Hobbes. An odd thing, having conversations with a stuffed tiger. Perhaps this is not what a man does. It is what a boy does. I eyed the talking tiger suspiciously. Perspiration ran down the back of my neck. “How long are we going to sit . . .
Jami Attenberg, whose mother once dated Jonathan Safran Foer’s father, envisions an alternate universe in which she “could have been Jami Schwartz Foer.” Barring that, she compares Foer’s successes and accolades to her own possible career trajectory: Foer had his first book published at the tender age of 25. If everything works out, I may see my book in the . . .
A recent Observer article on Britain’s Orange Prize for women’s fiction referred to critical statements Charlotte Brontë made about Jane Austen’s tendency to write “in miniature.” Yesterday I said I wanted to track down Brontë’s remarks, and Jenny Davidson, a novelist who teaches an undergraduate seminar on Jane Austen at Columbia, is on the case. She forwards relevant excerpts from . . .