Below writer Jean Thompson (Throw Like a Girl) offers a rejoinder to Stephen King’s charge that short story writers are hastening the decline of the form with airless and insular tales. “When circulation falters,” says King, “the air in the room gets stale.” The 2007 edition of the Best American Short Stories, edited by Stephen King, is out, and . . .
Will Clarke, a fellow When I Was a Loser contributor, might be surprised to learn that parents have objected to his “pornographic” essay.
Is Ayn Rand the most influential female writer of the last fifty years? Lordy, I hope not, but in these days of race-to-the-bottom capitalism, I think she might be. Atlas Shrugged, the most widely-read of her tracts, first appeared fifty years ago tomorrow. When the New York Times panned the book back in 1957, one Alan Greenspan rose to its . . .
“Dating back to my bookstore days, out of all the major literary awards … only the Nobel reliably drove significant interest.”
Jenny Diski has been sucked into the World of MetaTalk, but there’s hope. She’s not yet talking in terms of the Green, the Blue, & the Gray.