Bookforum‘s “Cultural Obituaries” discussion series begins at the New York Public Library on April 9, with Making Sense of Black Nationalism in the Obama Era, an event organized around a forthcoming piece by Victor LaValle. Yesterday I asked my friend Chris Lehmann — co-editor of the magazine and a fellow LaValle fan — if he could tell me a little . . .
Flannery O’Connor’s famous acceptance-letter rejection might lead you to believe that she tended not to doubt her writing. Brad Gooch’s new biography reveals otherwise. At seventeen, O’Connor was invited to contribute to the high school paper. “‘I don’t know how to write,’ Mary Flannery answered. ‘But I can draw.’” And years later, in the first iteration of her talk, “Some . . .
“He’s read a million books and remembered them, but he is not an original thinker.” — Mailer, on Saul Bellow
“I like to think that after firing this off, Dickens burst into tears, then got on the computer and played Web Sudoku for an hour.”
Salman Rushdie pans this year’s Oscar winners, Slumdog Millionaire especially.