I'm interviewed over at Creative Writing Now about reviewing books. I don't know what was into me, but I felt rather playful and sarcastic the day I answered the questions. RE: below — I don't even have a cat! I even talked about the literary establishment's preference for Jonathan Franzen — I mean, for male […]
Granta has another list of Best Novelists . . . except this time, instead of focusing on British or American, they’re going Spanish. Love it. Despite all the complaints about lists and prizes (many of which are justified, since the criteria are often subjective or obscure), these type of hierarchies still serve a semi-useful function […]
Thanks to the Fictionaut blog for pointing me toward this Tin House essay. These first two paragraphs perfectly encapsulate the sociological shift that has overtaken writers in the last half century: I don’t suppose anyone has ever done an in-depth study of that interesting form of literary ephemera, the author dust jacket biography. But if […]
A new book, Los Angeles in Maps, by Glen Creason, showcases 72 maps from throughout Los Angeles history. Of particular interest to literary folk is the one that shows the library locations circa 1930. Apparently the city did not skimp on library branches even back before the depression. That particular map is not available online, […]
Glad to see my alma mater USC has started a blog for their creative writing grad program — MPW, as opposed to MFA. They just love different initials. It’s called The Gamut, and it certainly spans it — so far I’ve seen Eminem, The Muppets take Manhattan, Thoreau, Sandra Tsing Loh, and an inquiry into […]
I have a confession to make. I have a dark, horrid secret known only to those close to me. I have a chess addiction. And it goes back a long, long time. Ever since I started playing my grandfather when I was a wee young lad (I never won, and the wise old sage kept […]
Back from an adventure to Powell’s Books in Portland — a veritable mecca of books, a non-corporate sanctuary that is the highlight of any trip to Oregon. I’ll just tell you one book I purchased there — David Mitchell’s “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.” Below are a few pictures, but might I say […]
Poets and Writers published their second annual MFA ranking. Not really any surprises — in fact, not one of the top ten programs even shifted a single place. Of course, the folks over at AWP have already panned the rankings quite devastatingly. In addition to those fine critiques, I have a few of my own. Since […]
The shift to electronic submissions for literary journals has reached a tipping point — more than 50% of journals are accepting some form of electronic submission. What this means is that the pressure has shifted off the journals accepting electronic (the pressure of a expanding slush pile), and has shifted to the journals who still […]
WSJ has an article today that says people are reading more than ever — because of e-readers. While some of the article uses dubious facts, such as Amazon's claim that people with e-readers buy more than 3.3 times the books as before (c'mon Amazon, do free books count as "bought"?), the story gets really interesting […]
