“On inauguration day, Tom Brokaw was moved to compare Barack Obama’s election to Czechoslovakia’s 1989 Velvet Revolution. At the eye of each storm, of course, was an icon who merged the political and the aesthetic–Václav Havel, the rock-star poet and prophet, and Barack Obama, the post-soul master of his own story. Both struck down eras [...]
Archive for the ‘Writers & Writing’ Category
The Creativity Stimulus: Prospects for a “New Deal” for American Culture
Posted in Art & Artists, Obama, Plays & Playwrights, Poets & Poetry, Politics, Popular Culture, Writers & Writing on April 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Touching All the Bases: William Safire on Baseball Lingo
Posted in Baseball, Language, Popular Culture, Writers & Writing on April 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Where would pols, pundits and morose mucky-mucks be without the language of baseball? “Here’s the pitch: Despite distractions, you have to keep your eye on the ball. You have to be aware of something unexpected coming out of left field, and only if your ad-libbed response is not off base will your home team go to bat for you. You can’t be born [...]
Obscene: Maverick Publisher Barney Rosset Completes Autobiography
Posted in Books, Business, Counter Culture, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Literature, Magazines & Newspapers, Plays & Playwrights, Popular Culture, Writers & Writing on April 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
From NPR, a profile of publisher Barney Rosset, former owner of Grove Press and The Evergreen Review, in advance of the publication of his autobiography, The Subject Is Left Handed, which takes its name from his FBI file. The article includes a clip from “Obscene,” a film biography (2007) of Rosset, in which Rosset discusses acquiring Samuel [...]
“Lolita” Redux?: Penguin to Publish Nabokov’s “The Original of Laura”
Posted in Books, Business, Literature, Writers & Writing on April 17, 2009 | 1 Comment »
“Penguin is to publish Vladimir Nabokov‘s unfinished final novel, The Original of Laura. Penguin Classics editor Alexis Kirschbaum bought the book, together with continuing rights to the Nabokov backlist, in a six-figure deal through Andrew Wylie. The Original of Laura will be published as a Penguin Classics hardback at £25 on 3rd November, and simultaneously by Knopf in [...]
Re-Writing the Right? Andrew Sullivan’s “The Daily Dish”
Posted in Blogging, Magazines & Newspapers, Media & Advertising, Politics, Religion, Sex & Gender, Writers & Writing on April 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Andrew Sullivan’s story is inherently implausible. How did an HIV-positive gay Catholic conservative from the poky English town of East Grinstead end up as one of the most powerful writers in America? “Today his blog, the Daily Dish, is regularly named as one of the most influential in America, and in November it reached 23m hits [...]
R.I.P. – Eve Sedgwick (1950-2009)
Posted in Books, Literature, Obama, Sex & Gender, Writers & Writing on April 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick died in New York yesterday, at the age of fifty-nine, following a long battle with breast cancer. The literary critic, who taught most recently at the CUNY Graduate Center, is best known for her formative work in the field of queer theory (in the books ‘Between Men’ and ‘Epistemology of the Closet’), including [...]
“Look at the Birdie”: New Kurt Vonnegut Short Story Collection to be Published in Fall
Posted in Books, Business, Literature, Writers & Writing on April 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Kurt Vonnegut’s longtime publisher, Delacorte Press, has announced it will issue 14 never-before published short stories by the author, who died in 2007, in a new collection, Look at the Birdie, slated for publication in November 2009. . . . “Look at the Birdie will include original Vonnegut illustrations and a foreword by Sidney Offit, a longtime [...]
Senseless Censors: Amazon.com De-Ranks “Adult” Books (Including National Book Award Winners)
Posted in Books, Business, Literature, Popular Culture, Sex & Gender, World Wide Web, Writers & Writing on April 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“‘American Psycho’ is Bret Easton Ellis’ story of a sadistic murderer. ‘Unfriendly Fire’ is a well-reviewed empirical analysis of military policy. But it’s ‘Unfriendly Fire’ that does not have a sales rank — which means it would not show up in Amazon’s bestseller lists, even if it sold more copies than the ‘Twilight’ series. In [...]
Brevity’s Rainbow: The Staying Power of the American Short Story
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Literature, Writers & Writing on April 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In Sunday’s New York Times, A.O. Scott writes in praise of the American short story (long my favorite literary form), challenging “the conventional wisdom in American letters . . . that size matters, that the big-game hunters and heavyweight fighters . . . go after the Great American Novel,” and posits this fascinating future for short fiction: [...]
Rise of the New Yiddishists, or: Contemporary Jewish Writers’ “New Sense of Jewish Identity”
Posted in Books, Jewish Life, Literature, Religion, Writers & Writing on April 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Thirty years ago the American Jewish fiction of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow was all about Yiddish insults, blonde shiksas, and getting away from the past. Today’s talented crop of young Jewish writers, such as Nathan Englander, Michael Chabon, and Dara Horn, are weaving tales bound in a newfound ethnic pride that has revitalized Jewish literature in [...]
Making Book: The Crumpled Press & The Art of Independent Bookmaking in a Digital Age
Posted in Art & Artists, Books, Brooklyn, Business, New York City, Writers & Writing on April 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“The Crumpled Press, the brainchild of [Jordan] McIntyre and [Alexander] Bick, publishes work by new authors and sets previously unpublished, notable lectures and articles into proper books — hand-sewn — on culture, politics, self-reflection, and poetry. ‘It’s original, thought-provoking work that might otherwise be tossed aside,’ says Bick, who is pursuing a history PhD at [...]
Sarajevo Honors Susan Sontag for “Waiting for Godot” Production
Posted in Europe, International Affairs, Literature, Plays & Playwrights, Politics, Writers & Writing on April 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Authorities in Sarajevo plan to name a city square after the late U.S. author and activist Susan Sontag, who, during the Bosnian war, staged Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot there. . . . “Sontag’s insistence on staging the existential play in the besieged city drew attention to the country’s civil war. The Washington Post dubbed Sontag’s production [...]
Newly Found “Schindler’s List” Copy on Display in Australia
Posted in Books, Cinema, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Europe, International Affairs, Jewish Life, Museums & Exhibitions, Popular Culture, Religion, Writers & Writing on April 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“A list of Jews saved from the Nazi death camps during World War II by the German industrialist Oskar Schindler has been found in research notes at an Australian library and will go on public display on Tuesday. “The list of 801 Jewish men was found among six boxes of papers that belonged to the [...]
No Mas?: Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez “Lays Down His Pen”
Posted in Books, Literature, The Americas, Writers & Writing on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“He is the 82-year old giant of Latin American literature who pioneered the school of magical realism and inspired a generation of novelists. But Gabriel García Márquez has barely written a word since his last novel, Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores, came out to distinctly mixed reviews five years ago. “Now fans of the Colombian author are [...]
To Wit, the Pun: “The Feeblest Species of Humor”
Posted in Books, Humor, Language, Literature, Writers & Writing on April 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Puns are the feeblest species of humor because they are ephemeral: whatever comic force they possess never outlasts the split second it takes to resolve the semantic confusion. Most resemble mathematical formulas: clever, perhaps, but hardly occasion for knee-slapping. The worst smack of tawdriness, even indecency, which is why puns, like off-color jokes, are often [...]
Amherst, Massachusetts “250th Anniversary” Literary Festival Set to Open April 1st
Posted in American History, Books, Literature, Museums & Exhibitions, New England, Plays & Playwrights, Poets & Poetry, U.S. Travel, Writers & Writing on March 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
As part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Amherst, Massachusetts, home to the Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst College, Hampshire College and the University of Masachusetts, a number of literary events are scheduled for the month of April. Events include a ”Children’s Literary Scavenger Hunt,” an “Emerging Young Writers Event,” and “A Reading by Poet, Essayist, [...]
“New” Walker Percy Short Story to be Published in “The Hopkins Review”
Posted in Books, Literature, Writers & Writing on March 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A previously unknown short story by Walker Percy, whose first novel, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962, will be published in the April, 2009 issue of The Hopkins Review, a literary quarterly produced by Johns Hopkins University Press. “‘A Detective Story’ is a breezy tale of William Pinckney, a Mississippi businessman [...]
49th Annual “New York Antiquarian Book Fair” Set to Open Friday (4/3)
Posted in Books, Business, Collectors & Collecting, Ephemera, Literature, Museums & Exhibitions, New York City, Plays & Playwrights, Poets & Poetry, U.S. Travel, Writers & Writing on March 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Arguably the most important annual book fair in the United States will be held this coming weekend, April 3-5, at the Park Avenue Armory (643 Park Avenue, at 67th Street) in New York City. General information (hours, entrance fees, etc) about the 49th annual event, organized by Sanford L. Smith and Associates and sponsored by the [...]
Brevity Is the Soul of Poetry: Ben Okri Releases New Poem on Twitter
Posted in Books, Language, Literature, Media & Advertising, Poets & Poetry, World Wide Web, Writers & Writing on March 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Short, lucid writing is needed in these uncertain times, according to the Booker prize-winning Nigerian author Ben Okri, who is releasing a new poem line by line on Twitter. . . . “‘I sing a new freedom,’ Okri Twittered yesterday, following it up today with the second line of the poem, ‘Freedom with discipline’, today. The poem was [...]
Being Ernest Hemingway: Anthony Hopkins to Play Hemingway in New Film
Posted in Books, Cinema, Literature, Popular Culture, Writers & Writing on March 26, 2009 | 1 Comment »
“Anthony Hopkins will play Ernest Hemingway in an indie titled Hemingway & Fuentes, to be produced and directed by Andy Garcia. . . . “Garcia, who also co-wrote the script with Hemingway’s niece, author Hilary Hemingway, will costar in the film as well, playing the real life fishing-boat captain Gregorio Fuentes, who befriended Papa Hemingway in the [...]
