Over at Slate, Jess Row looks at Ben Marcus’s recent essay in Harper’s, “Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It.” Of realist vs. experimental writing, Row writes:
These days few writers would self-consciously place themselves firmly on one or the other side of these boundaries. Living, as […]
Also, while waiting for Patrick Fitzgerald’s 2 pm press conference, why not some cat blogs courtesy of my friend Frostine?
Stuff on My Cat
Cats in Sinks
Kitten War
While waiting for Patrick Fitzgerald’s 2 pm press conference, here’s a snippet from Michael Kinsley’s column, “Throw Another Plot on to Boil,” in today’s Washington Post:
Alfred Hitchcock coined the term “McGuffin” to describe the gimmick that keeps the plot moving. He said you need one. The trouble here is not the lack of a McGuffin […]
I found “Meet the Life Hackers,” the New York Times Magazine article about “human-computer interactions,” oddly well timed in light of an increased compulsion to surf the web with no purpose whatsoever. Much appreciated were the following sentiments on the state of perpetual electronic diversion as expressed by Merlin Mann:
“We’d rather die than be bored […]
Harold Pinter on words: “Moving among them, sorting them out, watching them appear on the page, from this I derive considerable pleasure. But at the same time I have another strong feeling about words which amounts to nothing less than nausea.”
I have a review of Joan Didion’s new book in this week’s issue of Time Out New York, another addition to the already substantial critical love experience. (Link to the TONY review to come eventually. The magazine posts content on the web site a few weeks after it’s been in print.)
UPDATE: Here’s the link.
I’m half-way through Joy Castro’s memoir The Truth Book, a grim account of “escaping a childhood of abuse among Jehovah’s Witnesses.” By the late 90s, the author, who is now in her 20s, has escaped. (At least, one hopes she has.) She is finishing up her dissertation on “leftist women writers” and, desperate for money, […]
“in the senate, in the senate yeah, I do my little walk in the senate”
Today’s issue of Newsday features my interview with Mary Gaitskill about her new novel Veronica.
Play It As It Lays was the first book by Joan Didion that I read. I picked it up one morning, finished it that afternoon, sat quietly for a few moments, and then read it straight through again.
With The Year of Magical Thinking out this month, the reviews and interviews have begun. John Leonard’s […]