Rolling in the Deep: A Novel Is Not a Movie

by | Mar 26, 2012 | The Writing Craft

The recent passing of the esteemed Tennessean author William Gay has me thinking about good fiction. What I would call, probably, literary fiction but which moniker my friend April Line notes, has been “so rogered up by public perception” that we should probably...

Books R Good 4 U

by | Feb 16, 2012 | The Arts & Media

Back in September, Random House posted a photo on its Facebook page captioned “A book commits suicide every time you watch Jersey Shore.” I wondered briefly who from RH had been monitoring my thoughts (time to get out the aluminum foil) and how much they were paying...

The Death of Literature?

by | Nov 30, 2010 | The Arts & Media

Last month I stumbled on a thoughtful article about Italo Calvino, an author I really enjoy reading. For a series of lectures at Harvard in the 1980s, he decided to address the value he saw in literature, and how this would translate into the literature of the coming...