“I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.” — James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
My favorite newish book of the year is (surprise) the Autobiography of Mark Twain, and I wrote about it for Salon, where there are also best of 2010 contributions from my friends Laura Miller and Laura Lippman, and from other writers, including David Grann, Ted Conover, George Pelecanos, Dave Eggers, Elizabeth Kolbert, Anthony Shadid, James Fallows, and Rebecca Traister. And . . .
“The material was so hot that it deformed the writing whenever I came at it directly.” The Paris Review excerpts parts of the forthcoming interview with Jonathan Franzen.
Muriel Spark turned to novels late and easily could have ended up not writing them at all. Good thing her friend Tony Strachan “positively nagged me about the waste of my talent.” (Thanks, Amitava.)