Choking on truth
Roland Barthes’ Mourning Diary collects the notes he wrote after his mother’s death. Dwight Garner says its “unvarnished quality is the source of its wrecking cumulative power.”
Roland Barthes’ Mourning Diary collects the notes he wrote after his mother’s death. Dwight Garner says its “unvarnished quality is the source of its wrecking cumulative power.”
“[W]ithin the cage of this bloated, earnest would-be Great American Novel, there might be a leaner, funnier, better one beating its wings to get out.” — Kate Christensen, in Elle (print only), on Freedom
I knew Donna Tartt wrote the afterward to the reissued edition of Charles Portis’ True Grit. I didn’t know that she read for the audiobook. It might be the first one I ever listen to. (See also Tartt on being read to as a child.)
Part of the pleasure of reading MFK Fisher’s 1942 hard-times survival guide, How to Cook a Wolf, comes from the withering commentary/self-rebuttal she added for the 1952 edition.
Can a writer get through Somerset Maugham’s (hilariously scathing) Cakes and Ale without reading whole passages to others? Exhibit B; Exhibit A. Try it; let me know how you fare.