Below: a quote-and-reply format with the Lev Grossman article in the Wall Street Journal, in which I quibble with most of his assertions. “Some of which has to do with the book business itself—sales of adult trade books declined 2.3% last year, compared with 2007. Should we still be writing difficult novels? Isn’t it time […]
Okay, so the new craze sweeping the teaching profession is to let students pick their own reading material. Oi vey. As a professor, I already get enough students who have sub-par reading skills — I really don’t want to see more. I also see too many (college-educated) adult friends of mine who read virtually nothing […]
Thanks to Conversational Reading for pointing me towards this article in the Columbia Journalism Review comparing the value of Online and Print readers of newspapers. Annual Worth of a Print Reader to a newspaper: $940 Annual Worth of a Online Reader to a newspaper: $46 As Ryan Chittum points out, “That means a print subscriber […]
There's a flurry of new short stories being released over at Five Chapters these next fifteen days. Instead of serializing a story over five days, there's a new short story each day, including some from collections I've been reading lately — Jennine Capo Crucet, who won the Iowa Short Fiction award this year, and Lori […]
“Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity.” – Vladimir Nabokov I’ve been playing chess seriously for more than a decade, since my graduate school days in New York City, when I first lost money to the hustlers in Washington Square […]
Every time writers begin moaning about publisher's repudiation of the short story form, someone trots out a seemingly common sense argument: that our shortened attention span, created by electronic devices of all ilks, should make reader seek short stories more, not less. The argument goes that short stories can be read in one sitting, in […]
Thanks to Absinthe Minded (great name, by the way), for referring me to this article in the Goethe Institut about the literary journal/short story scene in Germany. Love the opening: “Like moles, literary magazines burrow through the subsoil and often bring literary treasures to light. They live on self-exploitation, are sometimes short-lived and bizarre, and […]
Over at Listverse, they do a great job of amassing a huge number of Top 10 Lists, but the ten greatest short story writers is wack. Okay, they have some shoo-ins (oh, and they limit it to American short story writers). O’Henry? I’ll grant that. Poe? Sure. Then debatables. Asimov? Well, he’s a talented writer, […]
The Guardian has released their summer short story bonanza, which includes some as short as a thousand words. Dave Eggers offers “A Fork Brought Along,” which has the amazing distinction of being the funniest story I’ve ever read about a fork. AM Holmes contributes “All Is Good Except The Rain” which has so much dialogue […]
Here’s a roundup of some of the reviews of Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, “Inherent Vice,” which starts selling on August 4th. Of course, if you’re truly a devoted fan, you can find the midnight parties on the 3rd (hello, Skylight! I’d be there if I wasn’t flying out of state the night before!) Salon Review: […]
