The novel: born laughing
“Show me a novel that’s not comic and I’ll show you a novel that’s not doing its job.” Howard Jacobson on the devaluation of humor in literature. See also Jacobson for Beginners.
“Show me a novel that’s not comic and I’ll show you a novel that’s not doing its job.” Howard Jacobson on the devaluation of humor in literature. See also Jacobson for Beginners.
Hawthorne and Melville were some of “the first American imaginative writers to challenge the myth of American Exceptionalism.” (Via.)
Beijing police order Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo’s wife Liu Xia from her home in an apparent effort to prevent her from talking to the press. (Via.) See also some of Liu Xiaobo’s writings, and a 2006 speech.
The mood of Philip Roth’s four most recent novels “is subdued, regret-filled, melancholy: they are composed, as it were, in a minor key,” says J.M. Coetzee.
“Victor Hugo would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he’d be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing.” (See also.)