Italo Calvino: “However—and this is the point—it is worth it. Or rather: one does not ask if it’s worth it. We are people, there is no doubt, who exist solely insofar as we write, otherwise we don’t exist at all. Even if we did not have a single reader any more, we would have to […]
Good advice from Charles Baxter: The truth is that, in worldly terms, someone is always doing better than you are. Someone is always winning more of the prizes or making more of the money or getting more famous. When you open the newspaper, someone else’s picture is likely to be splashed across the book page. […]
From the Electric Literature blog, Letters from a Young Novelist #3: In recovery language, we have a phrase called “pulling a geographic,” which is an illogical belief that switching locations will solve all of one’s life problems, when in fact the problems are rooted in the person and their substance abuse. I have pulled a […]
From the Barry Hannah interview in Paris Review: “Third-person singular, past tense, is most natural and inevitable, I guess. But you’d best beware the monotone in it and the temptations toward false wisdom, cleverness. First person is where you can be more interesting as a fool, and I find this often leads to the more delightful […]
I’m rereading Roberto Bolano’s 2666, and I love this passage so much I’m going to share it with you: “It was raining in the quadrangle, and the quadrangular sky looked like the grimace of a robot or a god made in our own likeness. The oblique drops of rain slid down the blades of grass […]
This is from “Making a Literary Life,” by Carolyn See: “Your ego is a big, messy, undisciplined, anxiety-ridden dog. It barks and whines and pees on the floor and sheds all over the furniture and takes nips at passing strangers and goes crazy when it see another dog that might be bigger or smarter or […]
Spend four hours reading your novel. Feel abjectly depressed about its suckitude. Wrestle with 1) the feeling that you should give it up 2) the feeling that you have nothing else going for you. Mope around the house. Frown at your twins. Rethink your life and career. Consider being a house husband and nothing else. […]
If you’ve ever wanted to play a first-person game based on Thoreau’s Walden, here’s your chance. The teaser below shows some clips from the game where you try to live like Thoreau:
From an article by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker about whether or not to go to Graduate School: Last week, one of my college friends, who now manages vast sums at a hedge fund, visited me. He’s the most rational person I know, so I asked him how he would go about deciding whether to […]
Peter Levine recently published “The Appearance of a Hero,” a collection of linked short stories revolving around the central character of Tom Mahoney. In an unusual move, none of the stories are told from Tom’s perspective, but only from the perspective of those surrounding him. It’s really a fantastic collection — alternating between tender and […]
