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The mess, begging your pardon for

Please excuse the ugliness. I need to update WordPress, and once that’s done the remainders will be back in the middle column where they belong. It’s still quiet here, I know, and that’s because, yes, I’m still working on my novel. 73,500 words, eight of ten chapters revised, nearing the end but not there yet. I find myself relating a . . .

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Literary quotes, quips, observations, warnings #8

Fiction and autobiography edition, featuring Somerset Maugham, Alexander Chee, Joan Didion, Jean Rhys, and Graham Greene, and (semi-estranged) half-sisters AS Byatt and Margaret Drabble   “Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that, looking back, I can hardly distinguish one from the other.” — Somerset Maugham (in video above) “I sat down to write a conventionally autobiographical novel. . . .

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Behind the writing of The Instructions

Adam Levin discusses some novels that influenced him. The Roth and Wallace are no surprise, but it was a revelation to find Kosinski’s (riveting, controversial) The Painted Bird on the list.

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