2017: Author Interviews and Features

Paul Auster Q & A:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/books/review/paul-auster-by-the-book.html

Auster again, interviewed about his new novel 4321:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/20/paul-auster-4321-interview

Ten books to watch out for this month:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170203-ten-books-you-should-read-in-february

Gord found this one, an overview of the massive amount of fiction L. Ron Hubbard wrote during his lifetime.

https://longreads.com/2017/02/01/xenus-paradox-the-fiction-of-l-ron-hubbard

This piece is comprehensive and candid, long but very enjoyable and entertaining reading.

Colson Whitehead reviews the new George Saunders book, which I am DYING to read:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/books/review/lincoln-in-the-bardo-george-saun...

(Thanks, Gord)

>4 CliffBurns:, Battlefield Earth was actually worthwhile entertainment as the article indicates at the end, if you don't mind a basic action-driven-quality story. Much better than Travolta's oddball movie attempt would suggest. Can't say I've read anything else by him though, or felt tempted.

George Saunders profiled:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/books/review/george-saunders-by-the-book.html...

From Gord.

Folks, if you haven't read Saunders, you don't know what you're missing.

The dreams and disappointments of Stefan Zweig:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170221-zweig-the-writer-who-dreamed-of-a-worl...

John Metcalf's legacy and his new book on the short story, from the Literary Review of Canada:
http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2017/03/critical-un-favourite/

I think Mr. Lamey has presented a good, fair portrait of Big John. Warts, toe jam, boogers and all.

Thanks for that, A.J.

Cormac McCarthy works hard at not working:

http://www.openculture.com/2017/02/cormac-mccarthy-explains-why-he-worked-hard-a...

The secret life of H.P. Lovecraft:

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-complicated-friendship-of-h-p-lov...

>12 CliffBurns: well that story just confirms my preexisting low opinion of Burroughs. What an asshole.

This year's Pulitzer prize winners, including Colson Whitehead, whose novel THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD scored another success:

http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/10/15248268/pulitzer-prize-winners-2017-full-l...

The latest update on the health of "Monty Python" alumnus, Terry Jones:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/16/monty-python-terry-jones-learnin...

Very good piece on Angela Carter's fairy tales, from awhile ago:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jun/24/classics.angelacarter

Gord reminded me that Tommy Pynchon turns 80 today.

Happy Birthday, big guy:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/may/08/thomas-pynchon-at-80-eig...

Conversation with Paul Auster:

http://lithub.com/paul-auster-on-activism-james-baldwin-and-the-horrors-of-trump...

Just picked up his latest, 4321, from the library, hope to crack it soon.

Once some of my yard work is done, perhaps...

Yahoo! Cause for celebration! A new Richard Russo book:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/books/review-richard-russo-trajectory.html?_r...

Great first lines from Harry Crews' novels:

http://bloodboneandmarrow.com/2017/06/07/harry-crews-first-words-a-birthday-salu...

Kafka's "joke book"?

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/kafkas-joke-book

21 I saw those the other day. How are any of them ha ha funny? At most they go in the "hmmm" category.

Kafka was a funny guy, apparently, often breaking up as he read excerpts of his work to friends and family.

And he had quite the extensive porn collection too. Not as square-panted and dull as many people think.

One of the best biography's of Kafka I've read is WHY YOU SHOULD READ KAFKA BEFORE YOU WASTE YOUR LIFE by James Hawes.

It was really eye-opening...

Editors should know their place. They are glorified spell-checkers and when they rise above their modest station, they should be slapped down HARD:

"The first chapter of Jim Harrison’s first novel, WOLF, begins with a two-page sentence. He says it was vanity, that he wanted to show it could be done because he was a young writer and hungry.

That was in 1971. A few years later when I was starting to work with him, I asked if his editor had tried to do something with that first sentence.

“Of course,” he said wearily, as if in my tragic inexperience I was unable to grasp the basic construct of editing him. Jim did little revising and was proud of it. Rewriting was for people who hadn’t worked everything out early—not for Jim, who insisted that he always thought things through before he wrote anything down. As for editors, why should he let them fool with his choices? They were not, as he had explained to me when we first met, writers. He also liked to note that he was a poet and “editors don’t change poems.”

“I wouldn’t change any of your poems either,” I said, but when it came to his journalism I wasn’t so sure. Being above editing was a pose some writers found situationally useful, the way some children are “allergic” to lima beans. It was the foot Jim liked to get off on and, sure enough, we tangled over copy our first time around. I was at Outside magazine and suggested that his lede on a story about Key West was really the second paragraph and the first paragraph should be the kicker at the end of the piece. He hung up on me.

I got an immediate follow-up call from his agent, Bob Datilla, a tough, reasonable guy.

“You want to pull the piece?” I asked, after his declension of my shortcomings.

“Of course not,” Datilla said. “We just want to be on the record about what a dumb shit you are.” (Pause.) “But Jim can be difficult, too.”

“So we’ll all think about it?” I said.

I’m not sure how much we all thought about it, but I switched the paragraphs to what I’d suggested and we never discussed the piece again. Maybe Jim didn’t notice. But I learned to tread lightly or risk being told, as I once was by him, “You lynched my baby.” His raw copy was so ambitious that I usually just checked the copy edit and wrote the headline. We talked about other things, like what we were having for dinner, as well as what we were reading. My working relationship with Jim and other writers, my growing friendships with them, was nourished by even the mundane details of their lives.

In WOLF, Jim wrote, Perhaps I’ll never see a wolf. And I don’t offer this little problem as central to anyone but myself. Fair enough. As a reader, I took that as a glance at a private mystery. As an editor, I wanted that wolf to be my problem, too. I wanted to ride along. I hoped that was how I could become a good editor, by editing great writers and getting to know them. The ancient Greeks had a word for this: hubris."

-From the book THE ACCIDENTAL LIFE by Terry McDonell, copyright 2016

>24 CliffBurns: On the other hand, some editors don't realise that their job is to edit, and in the interplay of different roles in any publishing venture, some give-and-take is necessary.

For a few years, I worked in the press office of a small (but at the time, politically high-profile) UK Government department. One of the things I found myself doing was subbing, because my bosses had spotted I was good at it and I'd prevented a few instances of there being Egg on Face of some fairly high-profile people. So it was that I once had this conversation:

"You cannot say that, Director General."
"Whyever not?"
"Because there is no verb in that sentence, Director General."

On another occasion, I used the word 'formulaic' in a critique of some work sent in to us by an external consultant. "I do not recognise this word" said the DG. I referred him to the definition in my 1948 Chambers' 20th Century Dictionary. I got the reply:

"Now I understand. Who am I to argue with Chambers? I shall use this word from now on."

Said DG was a former Treasury senior economist, one-time lecturer at the London School of Economics, and first husband of a well-known Booker Prize-winning novelist (who still uses her married name as opposed to her family name, to differentiate herself from her despised sister).

But then again: I recollect a wannabe writer, on seeing his story in print, wailing of the editor "He's EMASCULATED me story!" following what looked to me like a fairly minor edit...

I love an editor who candidly admits the hubris of trying to correct or improve a good author.

I love sports analogies: the greatest hockey player of all time was Bobby Orr and his favorite coach once stated: "I have only one job--opening and closing the gate for Bobby Orr".

A smart editor can recognize when an author's got the right stuff and just backs off and lets 'em go.

The worst editors are the ones who think they can "shape" an author, that the act of writing is a "collaboration".

I eat those motherfuckers for lunch.

Wonderful reminiscence of writer Denis Johnson:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/books/review/will-blythe-remembering-denis-jo...

(Thanks, Good)

Walter Mosley interview in PARIS REVIEW:

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6939/walter-mosley-the-art-of-fiction-...

I TOTALLY relate to his comments in this exchange:

INTERVIEWER
Do you write every day?

MOSLEY
Yeah, when I wake up in the morning.

INTERVIEWER
Weekends?

MOSLEY
Every day. People ask me if I write even when I’m on vacation. And I say, Man, do you take a shit on vacation?

******************

Welcome to life as an obsessive-compulsive author.

...and, in case you missed it, Patti Smith reflects on her friendship with Sam Shepard:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/my-buddy-sam-shepard

James Kelman, at work:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/05/james-kelman-my-writing-day

(From Gord)

The strange life and death of Kathy Acker:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/08/22/littoral-madness

He wasn't at ALL my type of writer, but I approve of Terry Pratchett's last wishes:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchett-unfinished-novels-...

A conversation between Ben MacIntyre and John Le Carre:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/books/review/john-le-carre-ben-macintyre-brit...

Martin Amis at 70:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/16/martin-amis-miss-the-english-homes...

(From Gord)

The racism of H.P. Lovecraft:

http://lithub.com/we-cant-ignore-h-p-lovecrafts-white-supremacy

Do you have to be dead to be taken seriously as an author?

https://www.guernicamag.com/raising-the-dead/

Marcel Proust self-published AND paid for positive reviews of his book:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/28/marcel-proust-paid-for-reviews-pra...

A profile of John McPhee:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/magazine/the-mind-of-john-mcphee.html

(Forwarded by Gord)

Bradford Morrow's notebook:

http://lithub.com/why-digital-note-taking-will-never-replace-the-physical-journa...

National Book Award finalists announced:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2017-national-book-award-finalists

Lost manuscripts:

http://lithub.com/10-tales-of-manuscript-burning-and-some-that-survived

Ishiguro takes the Big Prize:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/nobel-lit-kazuo-ishiguro-1.4336708

Leonard Cohen's last book coming out next year:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/06/leonard-cohens-last-book-finished-...

Resurrecting "dead" books and forgotten classics:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20171010-the-great-writers-forgotten-by-history

Victor LaValle writes of his experience reading one of my favorite authors (and literary heroes), Richard Matheson:

https://electricliterature.com/my-favorite-richard-matheson-story-is-the-one-i-l...

Howard Waldrop, a terrific writer you've probably never heard of--and yet he's been at it for five decades:

https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2017-10-06/howard-waldrop-upright-and-writi...

>46 CliffBurns:, Ha! I know him. He's been anthologized a couple of times by George Martin so I've met him there (e.g. Warriors).

Excellent--well done. He's one of those dependable, honest writers who gets lost in the shuffle.

Lucius Shepard was another one...

(I think we already have a "Neglected Authors" thread, so I'll leave it there.)

George Saunders gets a much-deserved nod:

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41585512

A good interview with George Saunders:

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/interview-george-saunders

Edgar Allan Poe was a nasty, nasty critic:

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/fall/feature/edgar-allan-poe’s-hatchet-job...

(From Gord)

Wow, he sounds like he was a real piece of work. I wonder what he would have been like if he'd had internet. Probably best that he didn't.

Poe would've made a first class internet "troll", no question.

But I tend to side with many bookish types who think reviewing these days has become something of a joke, negative comments/critiques deemed "unhelpful" by a healthy proportion of those in the trade. Fan fiction reviewed alongside serious literary work. Sloppy, inept writing coddled in the name of "giving voice" to oppressed individuals or social groups.

"If you can't say something nice about a book..." is the attitude that prevails.

As a result, we have a rather bland, boring literary scene. I'd like to see some more dust-ups, like the old days.

When Leonard Cohen pursued a musical career, did Canada lose a great literary writer:

https://hazlitt.net/feature/beautiful-losses

Remembering Leonard Cohen, in verse:

http://lithub.com/the-body-of-loneliness-was-embraced-two-poems-by-leonard-cohen

Orwell gets a statue:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/07/george-orwell-returns-to-loom-over...