“She took things too seriously. She was difficult and unyielding. That’s why Susan Sontag’s work matters so much even now.” This is how I see her monstrosity: residing not in whether she was or was not likeable, but in her relentlessness, and her refusal to pander. The word ‘monster’ comes from the Latin monere, to […]
Quotation: Susan Sontag Was a Monster Read More »
Preparing the annual list of people from the writing whom we lost over the year is the least favorite of my year-end blogging tasks. Rereading the list always painfully takes my breath away. Ursula K. Le Guin, 1/22 Barbara Wersba, 2/18 Lisa Garcia Quiroz, 3/16 Philip Kerr, 3/23 Anita Shreve, 3/29 Drue Heinz, 3/30 Sergio
Remembering Those We Lost in 2018 Read More »
Source: World’s Highest-Paid Authors 2018: Michael Wolff Joins List Thanks To ‘Fire And Fury’ Since I have no specific category for this story, it will have to stand here on its own. Can you guess who is #1 on the list?
World’s Highest-Paid Authors 2018: Michael Wolff Joins List Thanks To ‘Fire And Fury’ Read More »
The History and Future of the Western in 10 Books Part immigrant story, part adventure tale, and part allegory of truth and justice—the Western has been entertaining American readers for nearly two hundred years. Maybe we’re drawn to the setting: a frontier where mountains claw at the sunset and calamity is just around the corner.
The title page for an unpublished manuscript related to Malcolm X’s autobiography, one of several long-rumored fragments that were sold on Thursday.CreditJeenah Moon for The New York Times By Jennifer Schuessler July 26, 2018 16 For a quarter century, they have been the stuff of myth among scholars: three missing chapters from “The Autobiography of
Missing Malcolm X Writings, Long a Mystery, Are Sold – The New York Times Read More »
100 Books to Read Before You Die When you find yourself not knowing what book to pick up next, here’s a list that contains “a mix of modern fiction, true stories, and timeless classics.” The deep roots of writing Was writing invented for accounting and administration or did it evolve from religious movements, sorcery and
John Irving, The Art of Fiction No. 93 I’m not a twentieth-century novelist, I’m not modern, and certainly not postmodern. I follow the form of the nineteenth-century novel; that was the century that produced the models of the form. I’m old-fashioned, a storyteller. I’m not an analyst and I’m not an intellectual. WHICH BOOKS DO
Internet reading that caught my eye over the past week. Megan Abbott’s Bloodthirsty Murderesses The thriller writer probes the psychological underpinnings of female rage. Because, Abbott says, “girls are darker than boys.” New Black Gothic Sheri-Marie Harrison, associate professor of English at the University of Missouri, explains what she calls the new black Gothic in
COLDWATER, Mich. — One October night in 2004, Curtis Dawkins smoked crack, dressed up for Halloween in a gangster costume and terrorized a household, killing one man and taking another hostage in a rampage that drew 24 patrol officers and a six-member SWAT team. He is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan. After
An Addict, a Confessed Killer and Now a Debut Author – The New York Times Read More »
She entered popular culture as a princess in peril and endures as something much more complicated and interesting. Many things, really: a rebel commander; a witty internal critic of the celebrity machine; a teller of comic tales, true and embellished; an inspiring and cautionary avatar of excess and resilience; an emblem of the honesty we
Carrie Fisher, a Princess, a Rebel and a Brave Comic Voice – The New York Times Read More »
